Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“You can’t leave,” Dad says sternly, wearing nothing but soft green fatigues and a pair of dog tags that hang on his silver-haired chest. His cheeks are stained red, and Mom looks similarly disheveled.
I do not want to know what the Colonels Greer were getting up to before the cadets on guard ratted us out for trying to leave after curfew and ushered us into my parents’ barracks.
“We have to,” Maisie says desperately. “Gramps is on his own—someone’s attacking him right now!”
“You don’t understand, sweetheart,” Mom says, the term of endearment awkward on her lips. “There’s no leaving West Point now—battle maneuvers began two hours ago!”
“Battle maneuvers?” I glare at her. “What do you mean, ‘battle maneuvers’?”
“Every night’s a battle here, and it’s getting worse,” Dad explains grimly.
“The zombies are drawn to people and food. After Z Day, we recovered all remaining survivors in town and relocated them here, along with all the safe food.” He points out the window, his voice fierce.
“They come for us every night, like a goddamn blitzkrieg out there, and you can’t just drive out into the middle of the fray!
You’ll be slaughtered, and we just—” He brings his fist to his mouth, uncharacteristically emotional. “We just got you home, son.”
The words punch me in the chest, along with the wet sheen on my father’s blue eyes. Mom grips Dad by the upper arm and squeezes tight, their preferred mode of comfort—hard, respectable, and vaguely uncomfortable. He nods once in acknowledgment, and she releases him.
Flashes of light glance along the horizon. In the distance, a sound like popping fireworks tat-a-tat-a-tats into the night. Gunfire. This isn’t just a settlement, it’s a war zone. A tactical encampment under siege every night.
“What about the electrified perimeter?” I ask, desperate to decrease the direness of the situation. “Doesn’t that keep the zombies out?”
“In the early evening hours, when they come in packs of five, ten, even fifteen—yes. But once the swarms begin, the lines are easily trampled and torn down, and the dead roam our campus unimpeded, wild and starving. A regular zombie at nighttime is bad, but the starving…” She shakes her head.
“Had we known the impact of removing all the food sources from town, we would’ve left the food there.
Half of it we can’t eat anyway because of the preservative. ”
Oh. Oh. The realization hits Maisie at the same time it does me.
“The starving ones are worse, aren’t they?” Maisie says, her voice low and hollow.
“They’re faster. More agile. Incredibly vicious,” Dad admits.
“Not as coordinated as a living human, but far more determined to eat. It doesn’t help that, in the beginning, the previous superintendent ordered that we round up the docile daytime zombies and herd them onto the athletic fields.
” Dad shakes his head. “Bastard up and died the next evening thanks to his own bad decision. Now, with the town to the south, the athletic fields to the west, the residential areas to the north, and the river to the east, we’re utterly hemmed in at night unless traveling by air or water.
It takes considerable resources to hold them back. ”
Resources. That means people.
I collapse onto the couch in my parents’ barracks apartment, Maisie following beside me. “When were you going to tell us?”
“Tomorrow,” Dad says, nodding quickly to Mom, who’s nodding right back. “We’d decided to share that bit tomorrow, right, honey?”
“We wanted you to get some rest before—well.” Mom winces. “Before you had to worry.”
The door opens suddenly, and Gemma appears, as bright-eyed and restless as ever. “Ah,” she says, seeing Maisie and me slumped together. “They told you about the night hordes, then?”
“We were going to wait until tomorrow, but they were caught trying to leave just now,” Mom says, eyeing us as though we’re a couple of kids trying to sneak out without their parents knowing instead of grown-ass adults trying to sneak out without their parents knowing.
“And we were explaining how that’s impossible. ”
“Impossible? No,” Gemma says, considering. “Inadvisable? Yes. Very, very inadvisable. But the upgrades to Maisie’s rig were completed today.”
Maisie’s head shoots up. “How can a snowplow help?”
“It’s electrified.”
“Oh.” Maisie sits back, impressed. “That does sound useful.”
“It is, for the ones that are in front of you. The starving that come from the sides, though?” Gemma whistles. “Well. You can’t plow them all.”
“Now that you’re a member of our family, we didn’t want to send you out there empty-handed on your own.” Mom sniffs, then gazes at her sternly. “But it’s still not enough to protect you at nighttime here.”
“We have to go, Mom.” I’m afraid of what I’m saying, afraid of what awaits us beyond the brave soldiers holding the line for us right now. But I know it’s true. “Gramps is all the family Maisie has left. He needs us.”
Mom’s steel jaw sets in, but she doesn’t argue. “Then we’ll help you as best we can. Hank, set the coffee to brew. Gemma, get the dry-erase markers.” Mom’s eyes narrow. “We’ve got planning to do.”
The next thirty minutes are spent identifying assets, arguing passionately, and drawing wild, incomprehensible maneuvers on the whiteboard that takes up one whole wall of my parents’ barracks.
I can barely get a word in, but Maisie’s as sharp as my family, throwing in cunning ideas and tactics so cutthroat, Dad’s eyes are gleaming and Mom’s grinning her sharkiest smile.
I manage to score a surprised look of respect when I offer an idea I stole from the big battle scene in 28 Days Later, even though it’s unanimously shot down, but the Battle-Greers do go for my next idea, which I ripped off from a combination of Julio’s advice and 1990’s underrated Pump Up the Volume.
And they thought film degrees were useless.
By ten p.m., we have a plan. An absolutely terrifying plan.
“Any luck?” I ask as Maisie tries one last time to get through to Gramps, but her deep-set frown tells me everything I need to know.
Armed with Tasers, walkie-talkies, and a shaky understanding of West Point’s terrain, Maisie and I march alongside my parents, Gemma, and the bevy of cadets that follow them wherever they go down the stairs and out the big stone doors leading to the grassy Plain in front of Washington Hall.
There, parked in the employee lot, sits Maisie’s upgraded rig.
The headlights seem brighter than usual, and of course, the large metal plow guards the front, glinting like a diabolical villain’s sneer.
“We’ve got this baby rubber-mounted,” Gemma explains to Maisie.
“That’ll protect you inside the car from any electrical surges, but keep all limbs inside the vehicle when it’s powered on—that’s a must. The car batteries attached to the plow should last you a few days with heavy use, longer if you’re lucky. ”
Maisie hops inside, adjusting the mirrors, the seat, and learning all the new bells and whistles West Point’s mechanical engineering students added during the course of the day. I turn to Mom and Dad and choke back a laugh.
“What?” Dad frowns at me, his head looking hilariously small where it sticks up out of the Apollo space suit. Mom looks even funnier in hers.
“No, no, it’s just—it fits you even worse than it fits me.” Dad’s practically bowlegged from the wedgie the suit’s giving him.
“Laugh it up, Junior,” Mom says, but she’s smiling. “Come give us a hug.”
With her rubber-suited arms, it feels more like a squish than a proper embrace, but I relish it all the same. “We love you, son,” Dad says, his voice soft.
“We’re sorry that that hasn’t always been obvious,” Mom adds.
My tight throat chokes the words. “I love you, too. Thank you, for this. For everything.”
“Thank you for confirming we’re the new heads of state.
” Mom sniffs, then pounds me on the back.
“Come home soon as you can. Maybe for an actual ceremony?” she says, eyeing Maisie where she’s joyously flipping the plow’s switch on and off.
“I wasn’t sure what to think when Gemma told us you were road-tripping up here with your blind date, but son, you sure lucked out to find two wonderful loves in one lifetime. Maisie’s the real deal.”
“I know.” And dammit, now I’m crying. Because they’re right. Because I love them. Because I love that they already see Maisie for the amazing person that she is. I pull away, wiping my eyes. “Stay safe, you two. Gemma cannot be president.”
Mom actually shivers. “Don’t I know it.”
“Hey, I heard that,” Gemma says, coming up next in line. She throws her arms around me, and I hug her so tight, she oofs.
“Take care of Mom and Dad. And don’t let them declare war on the Canadian nuclear scientists.”
“Ha! No promises there.” She steps back, smiling up at me, and I’m so proud of her, I could explode. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
“Love you, Gemmy. See you soon.” My voice cracks along the well-worn lines of our preferred goodbye phrase.
She chucks me under the chin, then winks. “See you soon, Evvie.”
I take one last look at my little sister, committing that impish smirk to memory, and hoist myself into Maisie’s tricked-out SUV.
In the cold dark of the car, the dash’s instruments our only source of light, the reality of our plan bears down on our backs.
“This is crazy,” I say on a long exhale. “Absolute madness.”
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Maisie says so quickly the words leap from her mouth. “This is incredibly dangerous and stupid, and I’ve already risked your life enough.” She pauses, swallowing hard. “I don’t think I could survive without you, either.”
“You won’t have to.” I smile into the darkness toward her. “This plan is so crazy, we’ll either succeed or both fail very, very definitively.”
Maisie hiccups out a laugh. “Silver lining.”
“Silver lining.”