Preparations
“Have I mentioned that this is a stupid idea, Calvin?” Sayers asked as she looked around the Villa’s armory. Guns, many still shiny with packing oil, had been set out for ease of access on a random assortment of shelving. Most of them were military surplus, bought bulk from overseas dealers. No serial numbers or other identifying markers.
She wasn’t certain what the Villa’s previous owner, Sal Bonaro, had intended to use them for, and didn’t particularly care. She had her bow, after all, and the Mauser C96 holstered at her waist. Her fingers tap-tapped against the pistol. Her father had been an avid collector of firearms. The C96 was the last of his collection; the only piece she’d been unable to part with. It was running low on ammunition, but she couldn’t bear to be without its weight. One day, maybe. But not right now. “Just give me a reason, Calvin. Why?”
“Human decency is not enough?” Ptolemy asked.
“We’ve had this argument before,” Sayers began, in exasperation.
“But this time it isn’t a hypothetical; someone is asking for our help,” Kahwihta said, from across the room. The young woman looked through the scope of a hunting rifle. “Granted, they’re pretty far away, but they’re the first survivors we’ve heard from in – what? – months? That alone ought to pique your curiosity some.”
Sayers turned. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere, making notes in your little book?”
Kahwihta met her glare placidly. “Shouldn’t you be hiding in a tree somewhere?”
“Ladies,” Ramirez called out, from across the room. “Save your hostility for the walking corpses, please.” She twitched her wrist, and the collapsible baton she held hissed to its full length. “I have a feeling we’ll need it.”
“We don’t even know who these people are,” Sayers said.
“All the more reason to find out,” Calavera said. He sat on a table near the door, perfectly at ease. “Caution is wise. But too much caution is nothing more than cowardice.”
“Maybe so, but Sayers is right,” a woman in a wheelchair said, as she rolled herself into the armory. “I’m all for extending a helping hand and all, but Atlantic City is a bit further than across the bloody table,” she continued, her words tinged with a soft lilt. She was middle-aged, her red hair streaked with white.
“I agree with Saoirse,” the big man who followed her added. He was dressed in flannel and a puffer vest with a faded company logo on it, and had a battered ballcap on his head. “I’d hate to lose you all on something this risky. Especially when we’re not exactly getting anything out of it.”
Sayers gestured. “See? Saoirse and Dunnigan agree with me.”
Saoirse snorted. “I didn’t say I agreed with you, just that you were right.”
Sayers glared at her. “What’s the difference?”
“The difference is not all reasons are practical ones, and what is smart is not necessarily what is right,” Ptolemy said, softly. “But if you insist, I can name you three practical reasons for the journey. Number one: supplies.”
“We have supplies,” Sayers protested.
“Enough to get through winter, maybe,” Saoirse said. She was the camp’s quartermaster. She kept count of every bullet and can of beans in the place. “But we’ll run out eventually. Especially if hunting proves as sparse as it has of late.”
Sayers frowned. She didn’t like to admit it, but Saoirse was right. The zombies had practically denuded the mountains of deer and smaller animals. And the living had done the same to all of the nearby towns and villages. The shelves of every grocery store and gas station for thirty miles were bare. She glanced at Ptolemy. “What are the other two reasons?” she demanded, stubbornly.
“Intelligence,” Ptolemy said. “The gunshot, remember? Who fired it and why?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because whoever did it might well come for us one day. We cannot – and should not – fight against zombies and our fellow man.”
Sayers grunted. She didn’t think that was likely, but she could see that the others were worried about it. “Fine. And the third?”
“The zombies are the least of our concerns. A hazard, but a controllable hazard.”
Sayers sighed, recognizing where he was headed. “Not this again.”
“Yes, this again. The zombies are not a natural occurrence. Something instigated the apocalypse and the only way to find out what or who is behind it, is to go out there and look.” He frowned. “It could be the Deros, you know. Shaver’s theories were discredited, but that does not mean they were incorrect. A race of subterranean sadists might well find it amusing to unleash a biological plague on the upper world.”
“I thought you said it was aliens?”
“According to Shaver, the Deros do have regular contact with certain extraterrestrial species,” Ptolemy began, but Sayers raised her hands in surrender.
“Never mind. Fine. That still doesn’t change the fact that we have no way of getting there.” She looked at Saoirse and Dunnigan for backup. Before either of them could speak, however, Ramirez’s voice beat them to the punch.
“I have some thoughts on that, actually.” Ramirez set a black Benelli M4 semi-automatic shotgun on the table in front of Ptolemy. “Speaking of which, I found this. Remember how to use it?”
Ptolemy smiled thinly. “Indeed.”
Ramirez looked at Sayers. “Did you bring the map, like I asked?”
Sayers frowned but pulled the folded map out of her pocket. “Of course. I don’t see what good it’ll do us, though.”
Ramirez unfolded the map across one of the tables. She found a Sharpie in one of the nearby boxes, pulled off the top with her teeth and began to mark a route. As she did so, she asked, “Who can tell me about the Adirondack Regional Airport?”
Ptolemy blinked. “It is little over five miles northwest of Saranac Lake. It covers little under fifteen hundred acres, with two runways and parallel taxiways. At any given time, there were around sixteen aircraft based there…”
“Seventeen,” Sayers interjected, quietly. Ramirez smiled and nodded.
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what?” Kahwihta asked, as she joined them. “What am I missing?”
Sayers pinched the bridge of her nose. Of course Ramirez knew. “Sal Bonaro had a private plane. Private hangar too.”
Ramirez’s smile widened at Sayers. “And I bet you know which one it is.”
“Yeah.” Bonaro had once asked her to guide some of his guests from the airfield to the Villa, just prior to the end of the world. Russians, she thought. Eastern European, definitely. Mobsters, just like Bonaro. Sometimes she wondered whether they’d been among the zombies infesting the place, their sanctuary having become a tomb. “You can’t be serious, though. Can you even fly a plane?”
“In fact, I can.” Ramirez said it with an air of mild conceit.
Sometimes Ramirez could be so annoying. “There’s no way of knowing if it still works.”
“Only one way to find out,” Calavera rumbled. He leaned over the map, balancing on his scarred knuckles. “How long will it take us to get there?”
“It depends,” Sayers said, as the others looked at her. She ran her hands through her hair, studying the map. “If we take the safe route, a day, maybe a bit more, on foot. We hike up towards Lake Clear, stay off the roads, keep to the trail. We could start in the morning, be there by nightfall. Hole up in a hangar and fly out the next day.”
“How long by car?” Ramirez asked, stroking her chin.
“A half hour, maybe less,” Sayers said. “Why?”
“We’ve got a few vehicles here. Why not use one?”
“It makes noise, for one thing,” Sayers said, pointedly. “We’d be alerting every zombie for miles to our presence. Might as well ring a dinner bell.”
“That might be a good thing,” Kahwihta said. She leaned down to stroke Attila’s broad head. The dog thumped his tail, pleased with the attention. “We’ve cut down the local population up here significantly, but there’s still plenty of them wandering around down there. If we did it right, we could pull a bunch of them away from the mountains and get them moving down the road. Remember, once they start moving, they don’t stop.” She gestured lazily. “They just… keep going, until something gets their attention.”
Ramirez nodded. Sayers shook her head, appalled at the thought of even attempting such a stunt. She’d found that the problem with other people was that they were idiots – often selectively and unpredictably. Generally attracting the attentions of the walking dead was a bad thing. But here they were, discussing it as if it were a strategic masterstroke.
“So… what?” she asked. “You want to just lead them all to the airfield? How does that help us?” She looked at the map again. “We should go on foot. It’s safer.”
“Why exactly?” Ramirez asked, studying her coolly.
Sayers hesitated. The truth was she’d been to the airfield just the once after things had gone sour. She still wasn’t certain what she’d hoped to accomplish; it wasn’t like she could fly a plane, and siphoning fuel was a fool’s errand. Maybe she’d just hoped someone might take her away. “People… tried to get out. After things went bad. The airfield wasn’t safe.”
“How many?” Ptolemy asked, softly.
Sayers looked away. She hadn’t been there when it happened. She’d arrived a day later, maybe two days. It had all been over by then. “Sixty. Maybe seventy. There might be more now, or less.” She glanced at Kahwihta. “Depending on whether or not something caught their attention.”
The young woman smiled slightly, and Sayers felt a flicker of something that might have been unease. Something about Kahwihta bothered her, although she couldn’t say what. Maybe it was as simple as her abiding interest in the dead. Whatever it was, it made her uncomfortable around the young woman.
“I see now why you are so reluctant to go there,” Ptolemy said. “If it is occupied territory, so to speak, then our plan might not be the best one.” He looked at Ramirez, who shook her head and frowned, clearly still digesting what Sayers had revealed.
“I ask again, what’s the point?” Sayers asked. Ramirez’s frown deepened. Before she could speak, Sayers went on. “Why are we doing this? And I don’t mean Calvin’s pie in the sky idealism. I mean what do you expect to happen when we get there?”
“It’s not quite an hour to Atlantic City from here, by plane,” Ramirez said. “We could be at Playground Pier by tomorrow afternoon.”
“So?”
“So, we find out what happened. Someone might have escaped. Maybe there are other camps in the city. Other people.”
Sayers stared at her. “It’s all very well and good to talk about riding to the rescue, about supplies and all that, but what can the five of us do for these people, even if we find them? What’s the plan?”
“We won’t know until we get there,” Calavera said, in his deep voice. It reminded Sayers of someone calling up out of a grave.
“That is the opposite of a plan,” Sayers said.
“You don’t have to come,” Ramirez said.
“Of course I do,” Sayers snapped. “If I don’t go, who’ll keep Calvin alive? You? No.”
Ramirez was silent for a moment. Then she smiled thinly and said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about this almost since we found this place. The real problem is that people have nowhere to go.” She looked around, as if taking in the walls and the guns.
“There’s no place to hole up, to catch your breath,” she went on. “Exhaustion, fatigue, it wears you down. You start running on autopilot. All you can do is survive – until you can’t. Until your instincts let you down. But we can change that.”
“With a plane?” Sayers asked, her voice like acid.
“If we can fly a plane in, then we can fly one out.” Ramirez gestured for emphasis, mimicking a landing plane with her hand. “A bigger one, from the Atlantic City airport. We can get people to a safe location and ferry them. With supplies to support them here, where it’s safe for the most part. It’s not perfect, but it’s workable.”
Sayers shook her head. “You’re just going to fly people back and forth?”
“I’m not the only pilot in the world, Sayers.”
“And if we don’t somehow stumble across another one?”
“Then we make do,” Ramirez said, firmly. “The airport will have fuel, vehicles and supplies, if it hasn’t been picked over. We fly in, we load up, we ride the ten or so miles to Atlantic City. We know we’re heading for the Playground Pier, which is easy enough to find. And we start at the Adirondack Regional Airport.” She tapped the map and looked at Sayers. “We can do all of this in a few hours, especially with your help.”
“You’ve got it all figured out,” Sayers murmured. She had to give Ramirez credit, it was starting to sound like a decent plan. It wasn’t going to work, but as plans went it was solid, even though it relied on everything working in predictable fashion. Sayers had lived in the wilderness long enough to know that the world was anything but predictable.
Ramirez stepped back, arms folded. Defensive. “You wanted a plan. That’s a plan.”
Sayers looked at Ptolemy. He met her gaze, and she saw no doubt, no hesitation. Of course not. Whatever else, he was an idealist. An optimist too, in a strange sort of way. It was his way of coping with the state of the world. Rather than just accepting that the world had ended and nothing more needed doing, he insisted on making more work for himself. For her as well. It was one of the reasons she loved him – even now.
“Us humans must help each other,” he said softly.
She sighed and looked back at the map. “Fine. We’ll need something heavy-duty. We won’t have much fuel, but we won’t need it. I suggest we use the vehicle to draw away any unwanted attention while the rest of us approach from the tree line, across the runways. The fencing is all chain-link, so we should take something to cut it with. Bonaro’s hangar is at the far end of the parking lot. If we can get the plane onto the runway, and get the engine started, then we’ll be in business.”
Ramirez nodded, and looked at the others. “I guess we just need to figure out who the best driver is.”
“I will do it,” Calavera said, with what Sayers found to be a disturbing amount of confidence. He cracked his knuckles. “I may even dispatch a few on the way.”
“Why not?” Sayers muttered. “It’s not like we’re in a hurry.” She looked at Ptolemy. “Are you absolutely sure about this?”
He nodded. “I believe it will work.”
Sayers found herself wishing, not for the first time, that she’d just taken to the timber the way she’d intended to, all those weeks ago. She smiled sourly.
“People say Atlantic City is nice,” she said. “Guess we’ll find out.”