She was so tired. She could barely keep her eyes open. Miranda looked around the dim room, the only light coming from the small solar-powered lamp by the crib. She decided to try one more time to crawl into bed, but as soon as she did, the baby began to cry again.
“Omigod, kiddo…”
She dragged herself off the bed, almost stumbling as she took the few steps to the crib. By the time she reached him, his little face was screwed up tight, red, and angry. She reached down and checked his diaper, but it was dry.
“Are you hungry again?”
He hadn’t eaten well earlier; maybe that was it. She picked him up, holding his tiny body to hers, his soft baby smell filling her nostrils. She settled into the gliding rocker beside the crib, putting her feet on the matching footrest. Whoever had designed these things had been a genius.
She held the baby in the crook of her arm as she unbuttoned the top of her nightgown. She hadn’t worn a nightgown since she was a girl, but tee shirts weren’t easy to nurse in, and nursing while nude felt weird. Already, she could see milk leaking from her nipples. She nestled him against her breast, smiling at how he was already turning his head toward it. He latched on immediately and sucked hard, grunting like a piglet.
She sighed, smiling at the noises he made, a familiar feeling of contentment spreading through her body. All she had to do now was switch breasts before he got too full and sleepy. She leaned her head back, had just closed her eyes for a moment, when his sharp teeth nipped her.
“Ow!” Her eyes snapped open. “Careful, you,” she said, looking down. “That h—”
Another sharp bite sent a spike of pain through her breast, but Miranda could only stare, horror rushing through her. A dark stain spread on her breast and nightgown, warm and sticky. Blood smeared the baby’s face, but…
“No,” she gasped, as sharp teeth bit her again.
She wasn’t holding a baby to her breast… She was holding a zombie. It grunted as it gnawed on her, tiny, perfect fingers opening and closing. Perfect, except they were blackened at the tips, the skin split and cracked. Its squirming body felt cold in her arms. The curve of his cheek was marbled with delicate black streaks just under the skin and smeared with her blood. She recoiled, pushing it away, but the zombie she had thought was her baby bit her harder, gnawing on her mangled breast. Blood flowed over her body, drenching the nightgown. She felt the scream clawing its way out, opened her mouth—
Miranda jerked awake, a strangled cry stuck in her throat. She bolted upright, gasping. Her body felt sticky from the sweat that covered her. She clasped her breast in her hand, her other arm crossing over her chest to protect herself. Heart thundering against her sternum, she looked across the room. There was no gliding rocking chair and footrest, no crib, just the chaise lounge next to a small table littered with books, and the little solar-powered lamp. She lifted her hands to her face, covering her nose and mouth.
“Oh fuck,” she whispered.
She rocked back and forth as the shock and fear subsided. Delilah wriggled closer, whimpering and licking her hands. Miranda buried her face in the pit bull’s neck, holding on tighter than she knew dogs liked.
“Oh fuck, Liley,” she gasped. “Jesus.”
She let Delilah go, though her trusty canine friend stayed glued to her side. She’d had a particularly bad run of nightmares lately. This was the tenth night in row. Sometimes, the baby was a zombie. Sometimes, Mario handed her their child, his face aglow with love and happiness, before he told her it was her fault that it was going to die. All were variations on a theme, like the director’s cut of a horror film with endless, alternate endings.
She squinted at her watch, then crawled out of bed. Five hours until she had to get up to go to P-Land with Rocco. She wouldn’t be going back to sleep. If she tried, she’d just lay there, staring at the ceiling or the insides of her eyelids, while the instant replay rattled from one side of her skull to the other.
She retrieved an over-sized tee shirt from the floor, tugging it on as she padded down the stairs in the dark. She smacked her lips, tongue tacky against the roof of her mouth from thirst. The kitchen’s linoleum floor felt smooth against her feet as she tugged on the handle of the fridge. She looked inside. Her lungs expelled a sigh that her body sagged into. There were still six bottles of hard cider in the empty, half-sized appliance. She’d had a few before bed, but hadn’t been sure there were more. She picked up three bottles in one hand, letting the fridge door swing shut as she pried the magnetic bottle opener from it. She opened the bottles, left two on the counter, and lifted the third to her mouth. The cold cider bubbled on her tongue and fizzed against the inside of her mouth, crisp and tangy. She swallowed, enjoying the chill as the cider made its way to her stomach. She leaned against the fridge, trying not to think about the dream. Trying to ignore the jumble of feelings it stirred inside her.
“At least he wasn’t in it,” she whispered to herself, because the dreams with Mario were always worse than those with just the baby.
She took another pull on the bottle, then another, and tried not to think.
“I think we can all agree on that,” Zoe said.
Miranda closed her eyes against the sunlight pouring in through the windows, almost whimpering with relief. Her head had started to pound about the time they arrived, one of those stealth hangovers that lulled you into thinking you were okay, until you weren’t.
Zoe, one of P-Land’s three governing council members, was a plump, middle-aged woman. Her long straight hair was always parted in the center, and mostly salt and pepper, but there was still some brown that hadn’t thrown in the towel. Miranda could never decide if Zoe was turn-into-a-Dasher plump, because she dressed in flowing smock dresses made of fabric so loud that looking at them hurt. Today was no exception. Her favored scents seemed to be a mix of weed and patchouli. She even had some of those hippy beaded necklaces and round wire-rimmed glasses.
Miranda liked hippies. They were usually good-hearted folks trying to put some positivity out into the world, and God knew the world needed positivity in a big way. Zoe was doing her damndest to give hippies a bad name, not in terms of her intentions, but execution. She kept saying things like ‘honoring the process’ and ‘I invite you all to think deeply about this’ and ‘it’s important that we be intentional.’ The woman was a marvel, really, but with the way her head was pounding, Miranda couldn’t appreciate the absurdity of it. If Zoe invited her to think deeply and intentionally while honoring the process about one more no-brainer decision, her brain was going to leak from her ears.
Rocco leaned over to whisper in Miranda’s ear. “If this goes more than another ten minutes, pretend you have the runs.”
She snorted. When Rocco’s eyes bugged out at her, she realized he was serious.
“We’ll have to take it to the working groups, of course, but I think once everyone has had a chance to discuss and process your proposal, they’ll agree it’s the most inclusive solution.”
For the mother fucking love of God, Miranda thought, lowering her forehead into her hand.
“Are you okay, Miranda?”
Miranda snapped her head up and smiled—she hoped sweetly. The last thing she needed was for Zoe to get on a tear about medicinal herbs. “I’m fine, Zoe. Just a little tired.”
Rocco gave Zoe a pained smile, as if the exchange between the two women hadn’t happened. “I think that would be great, Zoe. I can’t wait to hear what your working groups think.”
“I’m so happy we can have such a productive dialogue, Rocco. I know you’re not as much of a process person as we are here.”
All three of the P-Land council members chuckled good-naturedly. Rocco looked like he had a bad case of gas. Miranda could see it was taking everything he had to not scream, because it was taking everything that she had to not scream. They’d just spent an hour discussing her idea to include newer arrivals in the vaccination schedule. She and Rocco had agreed it was the way to go in ten seconds, making their decision-making process point-insert-a-shit-ton-of-zeros-before-a-one times faster. They still hadn’t gotten to the point of this meeting, either. Everything discussed so far could have waited.
“Why are we here?” Rocco said brusquely.
Miranda looked at him sidelong. His brow furrowed so deep that his eyebrows had practically knitted together. His mouth had become a hard, straight line, which was usually a precursor to—
Oh, there’s the scowl, she thought.
The council members quit chuckling and cast one another furtive glances. Zoe shifted in her seat, eyes downcast, shuffling the one piece of paper in front of her.
“We could have productively dialogued at our regular meeting,” Rocco said, impatience finally cracking his admittedly thin veneer of politeness. “Quit beating around the bush and tell us whatever it is you’re tap-dancing around.”
The council members weren’t used to Rocco being this blunt, even though Miranda knew he was holding back.
“Uh, yeah, well… There is one more thing.”
Heads swiveled to Toby. Toby was on the high end of middle-aged, with light-brown hair, thin eyebrows, and a small, tight smile. Every time Miranda had seen him, he wore hiking pants, Keen hiking boots, long-sleeved button-down shirts that were light blue or tan, and the kind of vests once sold in overpriced camping stores. Before zombies, he’d probably driven a Subaru with a kayak on the roof, with both the ‘Darwin’ little fish with feet and a planet Earth ‘Respect Your Mother’ bumperstickers, kept chickens, and subscribed to an organic food farm share. He’d been an outdoorsy, science-loving, organic and local food-eating Portlander before it had become the punchline for a joke. Toby might drive Miranda a little nuts with the hemming and hawing, but he was on the right side of things. He also wasn’t very talk-y.
Toby pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his hooked nose. What’s with these people and wire-rimmed glasses, Miranda thought.
“Uh, yeah, well,” Toby said. “We have a little bit of a situation.”
Silence, during which the three P-Landers traded furtive glances. Rocco had a shoot-me-now look in his eyes that seemed likely to veer into going postal.
“It might be helpful if you tell us what it is,” Miranda said.
“Right, right,” Toby said. “Uh, yeah, well… We’ve got a group that’s gone missing.”
“Missing?” Miranda said.
“Uh, yeah,” Toby started, but then Zoe cut him off.
“They’re two weeks overdue. A scavenging party, six people.”
“And you’re only just telling us now, after we’ve been sitting here over an hour?” Rocco said, his annoyance plain.
The corners of Zoe’s mouth turned down in an anxious, caught out frown.
“The thing is,” said Daphne, the last member of P-Land’s council, who hadn’t spoken until now. “They were looking for something important.”
Daphne bit her lip. She was the youngest member of the council, in her early thirties, with brown eyes, light-brown hair, and a freckled face that looked wholesome enough to have been plucked from an L.L. Bean catalogue. Miranda put her hand on Rocco’s arm as his mouth opened. With the way his jaw had tightened, and the scowl on his face deepened, she could tell he was about to lose it.
Miranda said, “Where were they going, and what were they looking for?”
“Uh, yeah, well,” Toby said. He cleared his throat. “We have a newer community member, Alec. He’s been with us a few months.” He gave a small, tight smile again, as if it was all he could manage for fear of offending them. “Uh…Alec had some information that we thought warranted following up on. On his way here, he met a man who told him about a cache of weapons at Nanitch Lodge—”
Rocco’s bark of laughter cut him off. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said, incredulous. “Did he tell you the Easter Bunny is real, too? People’ve been talking about that place for years. If anything was ever there, it’s long gone by now.”
“We thought it couldn’t hurt to look,” Daphne said, her face flushing pink. Her clipped voice implied she didn’t appreciate Rocco’s mockery.
“Fucking sent people to Nanitch Lodge,” Rocco muttered, sounding incredulous.
“What’s Nanitch Lodge?” Miranda asked. Whatever it was, this was the first she had heard of it.
“It was a Boy Scout camp on Mount Hood,” Rocco said, his voice dripping with derision. “People have been talking about the hidden weapons up there for years, but you have to go through or around Portland to get there. Even if there aren’t zombies at Nanitch Lodge, getting there will kill you.”
“We don’t know that,” Daphne objected, her voice rising. “It—”
Miranda found herself grateful not to be on the receiving end of the filthy glare Rocco silenced Daphne with. He said, voice flat, “I suppose you want me to send Tucci and Rich up there to see if they’re still alive.”
Zoe’s hands flapped the air in front of her. “Let’s not argue,” she said. “In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t such a good decision, but…”
“I resent that,” Daphne snapped. “We took it to the community for a vote!”
“That probably took a year,” Rocco snorted.
Daphne glared at Rocco. “That’s the kind of attitude that gives LO a—”
“Okay, okay,” Zoe said, raising her voice and cutting Daphne off. “None of this is helpful. Let’s just take a moment to center ourselves, okay?” She gave Rocco a feeble smile. Good luck trying to placate him with that, Miranda thought.
“In retrospect,” Zoe continued, “I think that maybe it wasn’t such a good decision.” Daphne opened her mouth, but Zoe kept talking. “We would like Miranda and Rich to go look for them.” She took a deep breath. “It’s a big ask, we know, but they’re the only ones who can do it without being in danger themselves.”
“No way,” Rocco said, at the same time Miranda said, “Yes.”
Rocco side-eyed her. “No! No way.”
“Oh, stop it!” Her headache had decided to ramp things up, robbing her of patience for Rocco’s temper tantrum. “You’re annoyed they didn’t start with this, but you don’t mean that.”
Rocco glowered at her. “If Tucci and Rich are willing to go, fine,” he said. “But you shouldn’t beat around the bush. And you sure as shit shouldn’t be sending your people out like Ponce de Leon looking for the goddamned Fountain of Youth.”
An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Finally, Toby said, directing his words to Miranda, “Um, yeah, well… We really appreciate you even considering it, Mi—”
“Do the people they’re going after know they repel zombies?” Rocco said, interrupting him.
Toby froze, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple making him look like a startled turkey.
“Great, fucking great,” Rocco said. “Are they people who can keep their mouths shut at least? What about this new guy?”
“Keep their mouths shut? I think so,” Zoe said, sounding apologetic.
“So no,” Rocco said.
“It’s going to get out sooner or later,” Miranda said to him.
“That’s not the point,” he snapped. Rocco rose to his feet, advancing to the table to loom over the P-Landers. “If they find any of your people alive, they’re coming to live at LO. If they’re even thinking of flapping their jaws, I want them where I can remind them not to.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but stomped from the room, cursing under his breath. Miranda stood, brushing her hair back from her face.
Zoe sighed, a defeated sound that bordered on a whimper. “That could have gone better.”
“It could have gone a lot worse,” Miranda said.
Toby said, “We didn’t think he’d get so angry…”
Miranda looked at Toby, surprised. She’d never heard him say anything that wasn’t prefaced with at least an ‘Um,’ if not the entire ‘Um, yeah, well.’
“He wouldn’t have, normally,” Miranda said. “We have people showing up because they’ve heard about the vaccine, and you know our food situation. Vaccine production and rollout has to slow down, like we discussed, since eating is a higher priority.” Her stomach plunged when she realized she’d mentioned the vaccine situation; Zoe might want to talk about it more. She added hastily, “Rocco told the whole community where things are last night, and that we need scouting parties to go out and look for food.”
Zoe nodded, brow wrinkling, a worried frown tugging at her mouth. “After ten years, everything nearby has been picked clean.”
“That’s not our problem,” Daphne muttered.
“What?” Toby said, almost yelping in surprise.
“Daphne,” Zoe scolded, scandalized. “You don’t mean that. They do things differently at LO than us, but we always help each other out.”
Daphne scowled at Zoe, before scowling at Miranda for good measure. “We lost some of our fields, too, when the sound defenses failed. We’d never have sent anyone up there for weapons if it wasn’t for them bringing their trouble up from San Jose.” She jutted her chin at Miranda. “If anyone should be solving LO’s food shortage, it’s her, not us.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Zoe snapped, two spots of pink coloring her cheeks.
“If it’s all about food for LO, they’re not going to hold up their end to get supplies to make the vaccine, are they?” Daphne said, her face flushing a deep red. “I guess that’ll all be on us now.”
She stood abruptly, pushing her chair back so hard that it teetered on its back two legs before bumping back down. She stormed to the exit like a thundercloud.
With a touch of iron in her voice that Miranda had never heard before, Zoe said, “We’ll manage because we help each other, Daphne. We always have.”
Daphne whirled around, turning on Zoe like a caged animal. “Maybe that’s something we should revisit at some point.”
Miranda raised her eyebrows. She’d never seen Zoe snap at anyone; she hadn’t thought her capable of it. Usually, when someone went after Miranda like Daphne had, she at least knew them enough to have pissed them off. She’d exchanged pleasantries with Daphne maybe twice.
Zoe watched the younger woman leave, her face a study of pure astonishment. “Wow,” she said. “Well, I never.”
“Um, yeah,” Toby said, rising to his feet. His tone was apologetic. “Sorry about that, Miranda. She’s got a few friends in the group that’s overdue.”
Miranda waved his apology away. “It’s not like Rocco was a model of decorum.”
Toby grinned at that. “He’s got an Italian temper, all right.”
“Toby, don’t stereotype,” Zoe said absently.
“He does have an Italian temper,” Miranda said. “Rocco will settle down, and I don’t mind doing this for you. I know Rich won’t mind, either.”
Zoe’s watery smile seemed hastily pasted over her troubled expression. “Thank you, Miranda,” she said. “We really appreciate it.”
“You hear that?”
Miranda cocked her head and listened. If Rich hadn’t said something, she’d have thought it was the wind in the trees.
“There’s a buzz,” said Phineas, stopping as he pulled abreast between her and Rich.
“Yeah, I hear it. Haven’t seen any animals for a good fifteen minutes,” she said, taking a quick look around.
“Just once,” Rich said. “I’d like to go hunting for lost people and not find them surrounded by zombies.”
“Or worse,” Phineas said.
“How close are we?” Miranda asked Rich.
Rich had slung his rifle over his shoulder and had a map in one hand. He squinted at it, then consulted the compass in his other hand.
“Half a mile, maybe? And it only took us what…five days to travel seventy miles?” He pulled his sunglasses down from the top of his head, even though the day wasn’t particularly sunny. They were polarized, and he said they helped with the glare. He folded the map in half. It took three tries to stick it back inside the breast pocket of his jacket. “Good Lord,” he muttered. “It’s a good thing I repel zombies or I’d be in trouble.”
“Ready?” Miranda asked, nickering to get Delilah’s attention. She latched the leather leash to the pit bull’s collar. When the guys nodded, she said, “Let’s go see. Stick close, Phineas.”
Phineas grinned, the freckles scattered over his nose almost black against his cocoa-brown skin. “Like I need an invitation.”
“To Rich,” she answered dryly. “Stick close to Rich.”
“Aw, Miranda, don’t be like that,” Phineas chided, not sounding the least bit put out.
Rich said, sounding amused, “How ’bout we keep our minds on the job?”
It was nice to know they’d soon reach their goal. Rich had said the elevation was about three thousand five hundred feet, and Miranda could feel it. She was just happy this fool’s errand hadn’t taken them to Timberline Lodge, which was another two thousand feet up Mount Hood. They’d left Highway 26 about an hour ago for the narrow, windy path that led to the old Boy Scout camp. It had probably been a two-lane road once, but now was no more than a game trail. The forest had encroached, the conifer trees sprouting straight and tall to the sky. The dried, rotting leaves that covered the road in drifts crunched under their feet. Delilah strained against the leash, not appreciating her freedom of movement being curtailed. Miranda gave a few tugs, until she quit pulling so hard.
As the buzz turned into faint moans and hisses, she said, “Sounds like the world’s most miserable garden party.”
Ahead, Miranda could see slivers of a building through gaps between the trees. A low growl rumbled in Delilah’s chest.
“It’s all right, Liley,” Miranda said softly.
They rounded the last bend. A swaying mass of zombies, twenty bodies deep, milled along the length of a large building that looked like an old three-story barn. In the center on the ground level was an entry sheltered by a gable. Miranda could just see the top of a door below the gable. Zombies wriggled and swayed, milling in place as they groaned and hissed. There was a row of windows on the second story that ran half the building’s length. On the right-side end from where Miranda stood was a two-story timber porch to the second story, but the staircase that led up to it was missing.
“They’re here,” Rich said. “Or they were. I can’t think of another reason for there to be that many zombies this far up the mountain, all in one place.”
Miranda judged the width of Nanitch Lodge at approximately sixty to eighty feet. She stood on tiptoe, straining to see over the horde. “That’s a fuck ton of zombies.”
“There don’t seem to be any windows on the ground floor,” Phineas said.
“That we can see,” Miranda murmured. She dropped her heels to the ground, lips pursing as she surveyed the horde. “There must be two hundred of them on this side.”
“I haven’t heard of groups of zombies this large out here normally,” Rich said. “There just aren’t enough people to draw them out. How the hell did they attract so many?” He sighed, then looked to Miranda and Phineas. “You should walk with me, Phineas. Miranda will have her hands full with Delilah.”
“Why don’t you just let her off the leash?” Phineas said. “The zombies won’t eat her.”
“We have to open the door again if she doesn’t come in with us,” Miranda said, surprised it wasn’t obvious.
“Oh, right…of course,” Phineas said, looking embarrassed.
They set off, Phineas tucked against Rich. Rich put his arm around the younger man’s shoulders. Miranda walked alongside Phineas’ exposed side, taking no chances. Delilah’s growls became more menacing. When she barked, almost as one the horde turned. It surged toward them in a slow, stumbling sort of way.
Phineas wrinkled his nose. “My God, they stink.”
Miranda braced herself as the horde hit. It didn’t matter that they wouldn’t attack her. The wrongness of them, their existence despite—in defiance of—the natural order, never changed. They flowed around her, snapping teeth and grasping arms reaching, then shying away. They jostled her and Delilah, who barked and strained against her leash. Miranda pulled the pit bull in close, arms trembling with the effort of restraining her. Another reason she wanted to keep Delilah close was she didn’t want her leading more zombies to them.
Rotting faces with sores and bite marks, open maws and snapping teeth, exposed bone peeking through rotting scalps, noise from all sides, assaulted her. The horde churned around them, the zombies farther away from the human epicenter pushing against those that were shying away. It felt like being in a mob one punch short of a riot.
Phineas’ forehead was dotted with beads of sweat as the horde jostled around them. So was hers, and her upper lip, too, as the zombies shoved and recoiled on all sides.
“Phineas on the door?” Miranda said, raising her voice.
“Yeah,” said Rich.
“Goddammit, Delilah,” Miranda muttered.
Delilah hadn’t stopped barking. She wasn’t lunging in a way that would yank Miranda into the horde, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t being a complete pain in the ass. Miranda knew the pit bull would settle down once they were out of the horde. If there aren’t too many zombies inside, she amended silently. It was still better to have her along. She’d find any zombies they missed, and when she wasn’t being obnoxious, like now, Delilah was better company than most people.
Phineas stepped to the door. Miranda and Rich stayed behind him, sheltering him from the unruly zombie mob. He gave the doors a tug, but as expected, they didn’t budge. He squatted down, examining the crack between the doors.
“It’s dead bolted,” he said, straightening up.
“If there’s anybody in there, they won’t think us banging on the door is anything but zombies. We could try climbing that porch,” Rich said. “Did we bring anything we could use as a grappling hook?” At their blank faces, he said, undeterred, “Let’s check it—”
“Hello?”
Miranda cocked a brow at Rich.
“Hello?” called a voice, louder than before.
“Is someone in there?” Phineas said, facing the door again.
“Aye,” the voice said, a man’s voice, with the faint trace of an accent. “How’re you out there?”
“Never mind that,” Rich shouted, because the zombies had gotten louder. “We were sent by P-Land to look for you. Can you open the door?”
No answer, then, “Are ye out of your mind?”
“We can get in without letting them in,” Rich said.
“You need to find another—” the person began, but Miranda cut him off.
“I’m standing out here with a dog that’s trying to dislocate my shoulder and a horde of goddamn zombies at my back. Open the fucking door. We’ll keep them out.” To Rich and Phineas she added, “Idiot.”
“I canna open the door. You can climb the porch there, at the side of the building.”
“We haul our asses all the way up here and we’re supposed to climb to a second-story porch,” she said to Rich.
“Well, we can,” Phineas said, shrugging.
“I’m not— Fuck it,” she said, shaking her head.
She knew her irritation was getting the better of her because she was tired. Whoever was on the other side of the door didn’t know they could repel zombies. At the same time, they were standing outside the door and they weren’t being eaten. Anyone with half a brain should be able to puzzle out that they were doing something right.
“Okay,” she said. “I guess we—”
Delilah barked, louder than before, and lunged, pulling Miranda off-balance. Miranda’s free arm flailed, waving in the air as if she might find something to grab on to. Instead, she hit the ground hard on her hip and elbow. The leash cut into her wrist. Delilah strained against it, barking to raise the dead—or the undead, depending.
“Goddammit, Delilah,” Miranda groaned.
She pushed up to her knees and yanked on the leash as hard as she could. Delilah yipped, and started toward her, a look of reproach in her eyes. She wasn’t used to being yanked on and didn’t like it. Miranda knew how she felt. She put one foot on the ground to stand up, turning to Rich and Phineas as she did.
“Phineas, no!”
Phineas reached to give her a hand up, but he moved a step too far from Rich. A gaunt, weathered woman, with long patches of stringy hair that hung lank from a rotting scalp, cloudy eyes both ravenous and vacant, snagged him. Her filthy, almost taloned fingers, dug into his shoulder. He yelped, eyes rounding with fright. Miranda vaulted up, slamming into Phineas’ solid frame just as Rich tackled him from behind. Starbursts flashed across her corneas when Phineas’ chin connected with her forehead. His breath huffed out in an oof as her momentum was arrested by Rich’s tackle from the other side. They trio twisted as they fell to the ground in a heap, both Phineas and Rich more than less on top of her.
“Are you okay?” Rich said urgently.
Phineas sucked in a breath. “I think so.”
Miranda lay still as they climbed to their feet, blinking hard to clear her vision. She’d lost hold of Delilah’s leash. She searched for the pit bull as she sat up, but it was impossible to see anything but the zombies surrounding them. The noise had hit a crescendo, the struggle riling the horde to a fever pitch. Miranda stood, now furious with the idiot on the other side of that door. She helped Rich check Phineas, who had been squished but nothing more. Then she pounded on the door.
“You’re obviously okay here and don’t need our help. We’re leaving. See you never, asshole.”
“Wait! No,” the voice cried.
Rich looked at her askance. “You don’t really think that’s going to work, do you?”
“I don’t care if it works! Phineas almost died. As soon as I find Delilah, we should leave. They asked us to find them. They never said anything about bringing them back.”
“Okay, okay!” the muffled voice said. “I’m opening the door.”
The hideous squeak of the door hinges grated against Miranda’s ear. It sounded like an animal in its death throes. She’d have to look for Delilah later. If they didn’t go inside now, they might miss their chance. She stepped back behind Rich and Phineas. She’d let Rich take the lead, because she was so aggravated she was liable to punch whoever met them.
The door opened a crack, then a little more, before Rich grasped the handle and pulled it just wide enough for Phineas to slip through. Miranda sidled up beside Rich and followed him inside. They slammed the door shut and turned the deadbolt. It was so dark that Miranda couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, though there was some weak light ahead of them.
“This way,” said the disembodied voice of the person who’d let them in.
He kept talking, and they followed him through the dark to a set of stairs. The light improved as they climbed the stairs, until they stood in what used to euphemistically be called a great room. The windows she’d seen outside, which hadn’t looked that big, ran the length of the room, almost floor to ceiling. A huge stone fireplace was against the opposite wall, with firewood stacked high beside it. Comfortable couches and chairs were arranged around the fireplace. The room was open to the third story, and managed to be both grand and homey, probably because of the furniture’s plaid upholstery. The areas beyond the room’s edges faded into a murky darkness.
“You can put your things here,” the stranger said, gesturing around him at nothing in particular.
“Where are you from?” Phineas asked.
“Scotland,” he said. “I’m Alec, by the way. Alec Campbell.”
Miranda dropped her pack by the fireplace. After introductions were made, and Alec’s connection with P-Land confirmed, Phineas and Rich sunk onto couches along with Alec.
“You’re the only one left?” Miranda asked. She didn’t sit, since she had to go back outside to find Delilah.
Alec nodded, his eyes an arresting shade of hazel that looked haunted. He told them a story they’d heard before, of something that didn’t seem important at the time, which led to something else, and ended in disaster. He was the only survivor, and the fabled weapons store was just that.
“How were you able to get to the door?” Alec asked when he’d finished his story. “You had zombies all around.”
You sounded like yew when he said it. The burr of his Rs stretched them out, as if his tongue snagged the consonants a few seconds too long as it left his mouth. He had a heavy but not overpowering brow above his hazel eyes. His short black hair was grimy and swept back from his face. His bone structure was beautiful…high cheekbones, the kind of chin people liked to call rugged, and a jaw that was just square enough. His nose fit his face, which was to say it was beautiful, too.
“It’s a side effect some people get from the vaccine LO developed,” Rich said.
“What?” Alec blurted. “We haven’t heard about that.”
“Your council knows,” Rich said. “But out from that, it’s need to know.”
“Aye,” he said absently, nodding his head as he absorbed the information. “That might make you a target to the wrong kind of people.” He looked from person to person. “All three of you have it?”
“No,” Miranda said. “Just me and Rich. You have to stay close to us to be protected. That’s why Phineas almost got killed while you refused to open the door.”
Alec’s mouth fell open. “I’m sorry,” he said to Phineas, sounding horrified. “I didn’t know. Obviously. And I didn’t see how you could get through the door without…” His voice trailed. “I am truly sorry.”
“Yeah, whatever,” said Miranda, dismissing him. “I’ve got to find Delilah, Rich. Will you help me with the door?” She looked pointedly at Alec. “So no zombies get in?”
Alec winced. “Who’s Delilah?”
“My dog,” Miranda said. “Don’t worry, she’ll like you. She has terrible taste in men.”
Delilah sprawled at Alec’s feet, blissed out while he rubbed her tummy.
“You’re a good wee doggie,” he crooned to her.
Oh Delilah, Miranda thought, able to appreciate the irony even if she was still annoyed with this Alec Campbell. It turned out that there had been a weapons cache here once. Alec showed them the storeroom full of empty crates and ammo boxes that he and his companions had found, before someone got a bright idea that ended up with only Alec and a guy named Chris making it back. Chris had been bitten, so he ate a bullet, and now lay rotting a hundred yards into the forest. Miranda had known Chris a little, and killing himself rather than waiting to turn fit. Still, she’d searched for and found him, just to make sure the details of his bite and their flight back to the building matched Alec’s story. It was easy enough to find their route. They hadn’t been trying to cover their tracks, and that played with running for their lives. Even so, she didn’t know Alec from Adam. The P-Land Council trusted him, but seeing as how they had agreed to the fool’s errand that started all this, she wasn’t putting a lot of store by their judgment.
Delilah left Alec behind to settle in front of the hearth. The fire in the huge fireplace crackled and spit, firelight dancing in the windows of the rear lounge. Distorted, flickering shadows danced across the high ceiling. The building had cooled down noticeably once the sun set, even though it was still early fall. None of the windows in the building had been opened in a while, making the air stale, but the woodsmoke smell of the fire masked it.
Rich stretched his arms overhead with a groan. “Well, I’m just glad you’re okay, Alec. It’s a damn shame about everyone else, though.”
The noises of the fire, coupled with the musical drawl of the American South and the lilt of the Scottish Highlands, had mellowed Miranda’s annoyance. Phineas had sacked out a while ago, uncharacteristically subdued, but brushes with death sometimes did that. Miranda lay on the couch opposite Rich and Alec. She closed her eyes, but could tell she wasn’t going to sleep well, even though she was exhausted. If only I had these two to talk me to sleep every night, she thought. She cracked an eye, giving Rich the once-over. If he wasn’t already taken, she might consider seducing him just so he could talk her to sleep at night. She was pretty sure his voice would keep the nightmares away, too.
“You might have to move to LO, Alec, unless Rocco has settled down,” Rich said.
Alec said, “Come again?”
“Rocco, LO’s new commander, was pissed about this,” Miranda said. “Not coming to look for people.” She paused, remembering his initial refusal, and added, “Not that much. But the whole Nanitch Lodge weapons cache thing. He was pissed that your council sent people to look for it.”
At Alec’s puzzled face, Rich added, “People have talked about the weapons sitting here ripe for the taking for years.”
“I still don’t see why that means I have to move to LO.”
Miranda chuckled. “Rocco doesn’t trust P-Landers to not yap about us repelling zombies.”
“I was a reporter,” Alec said, sounding affronted. “I have loads of experience protecting my sources.”
“Rocco won’t care,” Miranda said, pulling herself upright. “He thinks everyone at P-Land are flakes until proven otherwise. He values the relationship, but he’s not a process person.”
Rich laughed. “That’s one way to put it.”
“I haven’t been at P-Land that long…two or three months,” Alec said. He paused, then a slow, sly smile spread across his face. “They are a bit airy fairy.”
That smile—slow and sly—transformed Alec from gorgeous to stunning. It was the kind of smile that made you feel like you were the only person in the room worth being with. The kind of smile that had women tripping into his bed as easily as her dog had sprawled at his feet, tummy exposed for a good rub.
“Well, get ready for LO,” Rich said. “When Rocco gets a bee in his bonnet, it’s practically impossible to change his mind.”
“It’ll be one less mouth for them to feed,” Miranda said. “That ought to make Daphne a little happier.”
“Daphne?” Alec asked. “You know her?”
“No,” Miranda said, shaking her head. “I went to the meeting with the P-Land Council, to keep Rocco from being a bigger ass than he was. She was pissed when he gave them a hard time about sending us here…brought up the crops P-Land lost when the sound defenses failed. She was not understanding about needing to eat being our priority. We never said we were completely halting our part of getting vaccine supplies, or leaving it totally in P-Land’s lap, but she acted like we were. She was really bitchy about it.”
Alec’s brow wrinkled, and his lips pursed in a frown. “That’s hardly fair of her, from what you and Rich have told me. Daphne can be a little…black and white.”
“Friend of yours?” Rich said.
He hesitated, then said, “You could say that.”
Ah, Miranda thought, the Scotsman was a player. It fit, with that smile of his. Aloud, she said, “Girlfriend?”
Alec’s eyes met hers, sizing her up. “No,” he finally said. “We’ve had some fun together, but nothing like that.”
Miranda laughed. “I have a feeling she has a different answer to that question."
Alec looked at her for a moment, then shrugged, unwilling to commit himself.
“Besides having the best wife in the world, that right there is why I’m glad I’m married,” Rich said. He stretched his arms over his head with a groan. “You want me to take first watch, Miranda?”
She shook her head. “I can’t sleep yet. You guys go to bed. I’ll wake you up in a couple hours.”
She wondered, idly, if Alec was going to say he’d stay up a bit longer. That slow, sly smile, and the way his eyes twinkled with an easy confidence, made her think he might. Which would be flattering if she were interested, but she was done with men who said one thing and did another. She’d never let anyone hurt her like Mario had, and she’d never let herself want anything like she’d wanted their baby. She was done with that—permanently.
“I’ll get some kip as well,” Alec said, surprising her. “And my apologies again for being an arse when you arrived.”