Chapter 8
Radio Silence
Cam
Jesus Christ, there were so many Zs up there.
He had known zombies would eventually show up on those screens, had known the horde was still heading their way, but knowing it and actually seeing it were two very different things.
For a moment, he could only stare at the computer screen, as Allie did.
The bodies, the eyes, and the movements were awkward and jerky, as he’d expect from decaying flesh over bone, but some demonstrated a quiet speed and almost-grace that made him think of videos of big predators he’d seen on TV. Newly turned zombies.
He took a deep breath, fighting back the sudden chill in his blood. Easy. Easy.
They flowed overhead like a malevolent river.
Cam caught the eye of one, a woman in a torn sundress, who was missing half her scalp and seemed to be looking straight into the camera, straight at him, a flash of something in those pale ghostly eyes.
He’d seen the reddish glow in their eyes at night, but on the black-and-white screen, it was somehow even freakier.
The Z walked off camera in the top left-hand screen then a second later was back in the bottom right-hand screen, and somehow, it was still looking at him.
It knows we’re down here. It knows, it knows, it knows...
He reached out a trembling hand and shut off the monitor before he pissed himself with fear.
He’d seen too many horror movies as a child, undoubtedly, so that plus the Z-terror was making him paranoid.
The zombies didn’t—couldn’t—know where they were.
It was only a horrible coincidence that one particular zombie seemed to be looking into the camera. It had to be.
“Well, they’re here,” he managed.
Beside him, Allie shuddered. “I’m sorry. I’m so used to automatically checking every time I’m over here.”
“No. Not your fault.” He reached over to find her hand. It felt warm because his own hands were freezing. Z-terror was such a bitch. “Why don’t we go in the living room and check out the radio bible?” Anything to get away from that fucking monitor. Even as a blank black rectangle, it felt ominous.
She nodded, and they headed that way.
The binder, true to its title, contained detailed info on how to use the radio equipment, and it seemed relatively easy.
He probably could have figured it out through trial and error, but it was pretty damn nice not to have to do things the hard way for once.
Key had been their radio person, and he hoped she still had their equipment.
Stuff happened on the road, and it was entirely possible things had been damaged or lost.
After they went through the binder, Allie told him a little bit more about her family.
Her dad had taught high-school history and read her all the Narnia books before she was ten.
Her mom, a security guard at O’Hare, had taken the family to an endless parade of church bingo nights and pancake breakfasts.
Her sister, who was in college for civil engineering, had come home when her university shut down in the wake of the pre-apocalyptic rumblings.
Allie still wasn’t filling in the blanks.
The six-month period between her escape from the army shelter where her family had died and her finding the bunker remained unaddressed.
Cam tried not to mind, especially given his reluctance to bring up Laurel.
But he told Allie more about Key and her dreams and a little bit more about his family.
While Key had worked with at-risk kids, Odette had been a home-health nurse.
“When things got bad and we were getting out of the city, I’d never seen Key like that,” Cam said.
“She’d always been tough. She grew up poor in Kansas City with her brother, so she knew hardship.
She’d always told me and Odie to stand up for ourselves and for others, that in any situation, you protect the vulnerable.
That was her whole thing. But after the zombies hit, she became this, like, warrior.
For real.” He laughed. “I’d figured I’d be the one leading us out of the city, you know?
I was a soldier, trained in combat. But Key, she was the only one of us who wasn’t paralyzed by those fucking things when we eventually ran into them.
” He thought of those first awful, inescapable encounters and how he’d frozen like someone had poured quick-hardening cement into his veins. “Without her, we’d have been dead.”
He summed up the rest, how they’d geared themselves up for travel and found pockets of humanity as they moved inland, away from the coast. They talked to other survivors, made a few connections, traded for supplies.
But they never stayed in one place for more than a night or two.
Key was adamant that they keep moving. And by then, Cam had long since been past questioning Key’s decisions.
“We picked up a few people along the way,” he said.
“Key would talk with them beforehand, ask friendly questions, get a feel for their personality, and she was the one who decided who could stay with us.” He paused then cocked an eyebrow.
“Did you know that not all people who survive a zombie apocalypse are good people?”
That startled a laugh out of her, as he’d intended, and she quirked a brow. “Sounds legit,” she deadpanned.
“Yeah.” He gave her a quick smile. “Not everyone was trustworthy. We couldn’t always tell from looking or even talking to them, of course, but Key always knew.
We trusted her.” He paused. “Once, after we made it to Kansas, some people she’d turned away set a trap for us, out of revenge or whatever.
She saw it in a dream the night before. We were able to avoid and disarm the tripwire they’d made that would have unleashed a group of Zs closed up in a house along the road. ”
“Oh, fuck.” The horror in her voice only made him angrier as he relived the memory.
“I couldn’t believe it. Like, why would anyone do that when there were so few of us left?
” Bitterness washed over him. He would never understand how the living could hunt the living when they were already so outnumbered.
“But Key also knew that wasn’t all they’d planned.
Key said we had to stop them from doing this kind of thing, talk some sense into them, so we arranged a meeting. ”
“She was going to try to reason with them?”
“Yeah.” Cam shook his head. “Only things went very, very south.”
When things had gotten heated, Odette had tried to get them to run, but Key had been adamant that those vultures had to be stopped before they attacked others, people who weren’t blessed with guidance.
Then someone from the other side took a shot at Odie, who was hiding with Melanie, and Melanie returned fire.
That was all it took to trigger an all-out, ugly battle.
Before the apocalypse, Cam had been in tense situations in the Marines. He had drawn his weapon, and he had used it.
Killing zombies was one thing. Killing people was very different, in just about every way.
The memories of that day made his stomach churn and his scar ache.
He remembered the sting and burn of the bullet and how Laurel’s determination had gotten him out of danger when she dragged him to safety.
Laurel had saved his life, and while Odette cleaned and stitched the wound after their attackers lay dead around them, Laurel helped Jessie hold him down.
She’d been the one to talk him through the pain, to tell him he wasn’t dying that day.
But he’d been leaving Laurel out of all of his stories.
Allie’s eyes were on his torso. “Was that when you got shot?”
“Yeah.”
When he didn’t elaborate, she slid closer and put one arm around him. He turned his face into her hair. It smelled a little like him now, the way he smelled a little like her, and that just felt very right. He slid an arm around her, fitting them together, and sighed.
She buried her face in his neck. “I’m sorry you went through that.”
“I was lucky I made it out alive. We managed to kill the scavengers, but we lost a friend in the fight.”
Mel had been a good person, a smart and funny member of their little family. Key had wept after they’d buried her, blaming herself. Odie hadn’t spoken to anyone for days afterward.
“When we got near KC, Key’s dreams gave us our destination,” he said.
“Key’s brother was only a hundred or so miles from there, in a big settlement that used to be part of a university.
Her dreams had told her the settlement was a good place, but KC was not, so we went around the city and headed toward the Plant—that’s Malcolm’s place.
That kind of became our home base, although we never really stopped traveling. ”
“So people are actually rebuilding? And it’s working?” Allie’s voice sounded shaky again. “There are real communities of survivors?”
God, he kept forgetting how isolated she had been for so long.
“There are several settlements around that region that are friendly, and some here in Illinois, too, that we’ve established contact with.
Plenty of them are happy to be part of a network, to be in open communication and alliance with the other settlements, while others keep more to themselves but aren’t hostile.
” The hostile groups were usually travelers, but he didn’t say that.
“Most are trying to reestablish civilization and long-term food cultivation. Some are continuing scientific research and modifying tech. Malcolm’s people have done a lot to map the region and create some kind of order and unification. ”
The wildest thing about it to him was that it all seemed to be working. Even Key, pragmatic cynic that she was, would say so.