“I was thinking the pink lemonade was much better than the strawberry punch. Especially if you have to drink it warm.” Randy said.

  “Thank you for that. I meant did you have any thoughts around what we talked to Janet and Frank about today?” Kelly said with an accompanying eye roll.

  “It sounds good. I love that we have a plan that doesn’t involve trying to find some place so miserable that not even Zombies or bandits would want to live there.” Randy answered truthfully. They’d originally been thinking about heading west until they found somewhere that they could raise the kids without worrying about crazy Senators, warlords or Zombies. If such a place existed.

  “Why do you think they won’t talk about the aircraft carrier?” Kelly asked. She was pinning a lot of her hopes on being able to cruise to some tropical paradise where they could all start a new life in hammocks suspended between palm trees. A cruise on a big ship with lots and lots of weapons sounded like a great way to get there.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’re worried about the Brotherhood attacking earlier if they knew? I have no idea what the plan would be there. Is there some island they’ve decided to move everybody to? Are they giving up on North America? I guess we’ll find out once we get to the settlement. She said it’d be on the coast near the ports so we could be getting queued up to take a trip. I’d love to be able to go live on some Zombie free island where they’re rebuilding society. I’m just worried that if something sounds too good to be true…”

  “There’s also the not looking a gift horse in the mouth.” Chided Kelly. She was in an unusually good mood and determined not to let reality mess it up. They were going to be stuck on this island until it was safe to go back ashore so she’d decided to just spend the time dreaming about what could be. She’d let the crushing doubt of a post-apocalyptic reality weigh her down once they were back out on the road. For now, she was just going to chill out, sip on her warm Kool-Aid and watch the kids play around in the lake as if they were a normal family in a world not inhabited by mass hordes of insane cannibals. A normal family on a normal holiday back before any of them had ever used a hatchet to split someone’s head open.

  Life was idyllic over the next few days. They got into a nice routine of eating regularly, playing on the beach and enjoying each other’s company. It was a far cry from desperately searching for food in between running from either the infected or the Brotherhood. The island was far enough from the shore that they could even talk in normal voices without attracting additional Zombies to the beach. They still kept their conversations toned down in case any of the infected within earshot had developed that enhanced hearing some of them had. They had some interesting conversations with the other people they were sharing the island with as well. They couldn’t get any of them to spill the beans on the carrier though.

  Despite their very rocky start and Janet’s admonition that the place was going to be miserable Kelly found herself loving the little island. She’d take sweating and swatting at mosquitoes any day over worrying about whether they’d have enough to eat. She didn’t miss the constant fear of a Zombie coming out of nowhere and attacking one of the girls. The island lifted that giant burden off her shoulders. She was wondering if maybe they could just stay there for a few months while lying on her cot one morning when someone made knocking noises on their tent flap. Frank, the commanding officer, waited politely for Randy to invite him in before unzipping the flap and stepping inside.

  “Kyler’s made it to the command center to debrief. Only one of the men who escorted him up there made it back. He’s going to rest up then put a patrol together to take you to your settlement. This whole area is going to start getting real dangerous real soon so the sooner you guys can take off the better.” Frank told them. He looked nervous. He was a logistics officer at heart. He didn’t love that his warehouse was going to be on the front lines of a shooting war. Fighting the infected was a known horror at this point. The prospect of having to fight people who’d be shooting back was a whole different ballgame.

  “Did Bryan make it back?” Kelly asked. Bryan was the petty officer who’d originally rescued them on a bridge on their path to cross from South Carolina into North Carolina. The man had ordered his men to rush towards a massive herd of Zombies crossing a bridge rigged to explode to rescue them. She didn’t like that any of the men she’d known had been killed transporting Kyler, but she really hoped the man who’d risked so much for her family had made it back alive.

  “Yes. Petty Officer Briggins made it back early this morning. I don’t think he’s slept since he left. He gave me a quick update before I had him find himself a bunk to get some rest. I don’t plan on letting anyone bother him for a few hours at least. When he does wake up, I’ll have him come see you so he can let you know when you can to expect to leave. Sound good?” Frank asked. Once they agreed, Frank spun around and went back out through the open tent flap. Randy went over and zipped the flap closed again to keep the bugs out.

  “How close do you think the Brotherhood are?” Kelly asked.

  “They’re all around us already would be my guess. That’d explain why Bryan was the only one to make it back. Those guys were pretty squared away. I doubt Zombies could’ve taken them out that easily.” Randy answered.

  “Zombies disabling a couple of them before they even made it to the cars is why we’re stuck on this island right now.” Caitlyn reminded them. Randy kept forgetting the children had minds of their own.

  “Not much to do about it now. Let’s go grab some food and enjoy one of our last afternoons on Mosquito Island. Once Bryan wakes up it sounds like we may be casting off.” Randy said.

  “Can we go swimming?” Zoey asked.

  “Absolutely.” Kelly said with a sad smile. She tried to hide it, but she was really going to miss this little miserable mosquito infested island. They’d been happy here. She’d loved that they’d been able to forget about the outside world for a while. She dreaded going from the giggles and laughter of her daughters splashing around in the water to the operational silence and dread she knew the outside world was going to bring.

  She set all that aside for now determined to enjoy every second they had left. She held Zoey and Ali’s hands as they skipped together towards the mess hall for the traditional PB&J and warm Kool-Aid lunch before hitting the beach.

  Chapter 6: The Hub

  The city in the clouds they’d attempted to build on the top of the buildings in Columbia, SC was officially destroyed. They’d received the reports that the north had blown the base to smithereens, but the extent of the destruction had been far beyond what they’d expected from reading the reports. The bulk of the people on board the helicopter had recently visited the city when Krantz had flown there to check on the progress. They’d been at the base when they first found out Roberts had been killed. They’d left as soon as they found out Krantz had been named acting commander. It hadn’t been fast enough to protect the newly constructed base though. Reports had caught up to them the next day that the city had been destroyed almost immediately after they’d left.

  There was nothing left. The men who’d attacked the downtown area of Columbia hadn’t been messing around. Where twenty story buildings had soared into the sky now there were massive holes in the ground. Piles of debris littered what had been the downtown area. Here and there fires still burned where reservoirs of natural gas or other flammables were still flaming up after all this time. The pilot looped them slowly around the downtown area a few times so they could take in the complete devastation. It was awe inspiring.

  Tom had been assigned to the city until he’d been recruited to travel with Krantz as his IT guy. He was the only one of them who’d really known the men living in the city. Knowing his friends had been killed was sobering. Thinking of what it would’ve been like if he’d still been stationed there when the missiles started striking and the building started collapsing made his knees shiver and his blood run cold. He felt an unfamiliar sensation we
lling up and realized it was anger. His blood was boiling. He was surprised to discover his reaction to this was an impulse to join in the fight rather than to run the other way. He wanted to strike back at the people who’d done this with everything he had. Not that the righteous anger of a slightly overweight IT guy who’d just learned to shoot a rifle would necessarily cause the enemy up north to instantaneously run up a white flag.

  Once he’d seen enough Krantz directed the pilot to continue on to Fort Jackson. It was a military base to the north of Columbia. It’d been the main communications hub for all the activity in South Carolina. The city in the clouds had been directly patched into it. Krantz had asked Tom reach out to them the day before to confirm they were still up and operational. A few of the buildings on the base had been blown up in the attack. They hadn’t taken any casualties though. Krantz took that to mean the settlements had known that there was something going on at the fort but hadn’t known enough to target the right buildings. To his knowledge that was the first time the people to the north had missed. He liked that they were capable of missing after all.

  The helicopter landed deep in the woods to let them out. Once they were all clear the pilot lifted off and flew slightly further into the woods before landing the craft on top of a concrete structure with a ladder attached to it. Krantz and his team walked quickly through the woods down a marked trail to an artificial hill with an entrance on the side of it. It looked an awful lot like the house a Hobbit would live in. One of the soldiers with him approached the door and rapped on it loudly with his knuckles. Codewords were exchanged in a whispered conversation via a hidden intercom before the door was opened for them to enter. The pilot came walking in last. He’d sprinted down the trail to catch up with them to avoid being stuck outside when the infected started showing up.

  Inside the bunker the walls were covered in rows of LED monitors displaying different parts of the base. Large sections of the monitors were powered down. Krantz assumed the ones turned off were the ones that’d been connected to cameras or feeds that relied on the internet or weren’t connected to solar power. Two of the monitors were currently showing their helicopter sitting out on top of the building the pilot had left it parked on. Other monitors showed Zombies running down paths through the woods. They’d been stirred up by the noise of the helicopter landing.

  Krantz was admiring all the monitors when a short man in an army uniform saluted him and introduced himself as the base commandant. Krantz returned the salute and introduced himself using his new title. That led to a quick conversation about the revised chain of command now that Roberts was dead. Once that was out of the way the base commandant, a man who went by Jenkins, got down to business.

  “What do you need from us to support the effort sir?” Jenkins asked.

  “I need a forward operating base that isn’t so forward I’m being constantly shot at. It needs to be close enough to the action for me to be able to easily direct the campaign from it. I need to know if this base can support that or if we need to look elsewhere. I also need to know if there actually is an elsewhere or if this is basically it as far as options go. Everything is going to start moving very fast very soon so I need a no bullshit kind of response.” Krantz said. Jenkins paused to consider the best way to answer the questions before speaking.

  “As far as I know there isn’t an ‘elsewhere’ that’s as wired as we are sir. This base was built out during the cold war as a hub for communications on the east coast in case of a nuclear attack. We’re basically at the center of a spiderweb of copper and fiber running all over the place. I don’t think you’ll find anywhere else that’s up and running and has the kind of capabilities we do sir.” Jenkins said.

  “Sounds good so far. Where’s the ‘but’?” Krantz asked waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “We recently got bombed. We lost some admin type buildings. It didn’t impact our communications capabilities though. It did impact some of our living quarters and we lost the supplies we had cached up in the main buildings. It means the north has an idea we’re here though sir. If they figure out this place is actually important then they may come back and hit us a lot harder. The one important thing they did knock out when they came through was our radar. We’re blind now as far as detecting inbound aircraft.”

  “The loss of that radar’s painful. What else can you tell me?” Krantz asked.

  “We have the gear to communicate to other sites up and down the coast. We have the infrastructure to reach across the whole country pretty much. Assuming the person on the other end has the ability to turn on their equipment and communicate back to us. We also need for any relays or switches along the path to be up and working. Everything was pretty much going to satellite for secure communications before the world went to hell sir. We’ve been busy brushing off antique technology and getting it up and running.” Jenkins finished.

  “Ok. So, I need a list of where you’re currently setup to talk to and where you could be setup to talk to with minimal effort. Try to think about how we’re going to get intel from the front lines to come up with tactics in real time. That’s the kind of visibility I need. I need to know what you can come up with and I need to know it in the next hour or two. Understood?” Krantz asked. He had a lot on his plate and needed to get moving. He was hoping technology may solve some of his issues. If that didn’t pan out, he could always get in a helicopter and lead the war the old-fashioned way. The way that’d seen his predecessor blown to pieces.

  “Understood sir.” Jenkins said. He saluted then grabbed a couple of his men and disappeared with them into a conference room to get to work on the list.

  “Hanging out in a base that already got bombed once seems like we’re tempting fate.” Forrest said walking up to him. He’d kept a courteous distance while Krantz had been talking to Jenkins.

  “We tempt fate by waking up every morning. What do you think of the capabilities here?” Krantz asked. He was genuinely curious what the old leatherneck thought of this situation. Forrest didn’t even pretend like he hadn’t been eavesdropping on the conversation Krantz and Jenkins had just had.

  “Communications is the lifeblood of winning any war sir. I like that they’ve wheeled out all the satellite feed junk in here and gone back to the basics with the wired communications. Like the man said though it doesn’t matter how many wires they have leaving here if the phone on the other side isn’t connected. Even if it’s connected how do we make sure someone is there to answer it when you need intel.” Forrest glanced over at the screen showing the small garage their helicopter was perched on top of. There were a handful of snarling Zombies wandering around it looking for the humans they were convinced must be hiding nearby. Krantz followed Forrest’s eyes over to the monitor.

  “I guess we’re not hopping back in the chopper any time soon. Kind of creepy watching them walk around like that.” Krantz said. He was talking to Forrest, but it was more of a random comment. It was weird watching the Zombies over the large screens. Normally the only way you got to observe the infected without being in mortal danger was if you were standing on a roof staring down at them while they screamed their heads off staring back up at you.

  “I still catch myself thinking there’s no way this is real.” Forrest muttered. “Watching those unlucky bastards walking around out there like that. It looks more like a scene from a Zombie movie than something out of real life. Not even a good Zombie movie.”

  “Agreed. Those things are disgusting. No way Brad Pitt would ever be in a scene with them.” Krantz said. The snarling infected by the helicopter were mostly nude. All of their exposed skin was covered in bruises, oozing sores, nasty looking rashes and dirt.

  “What do you want us to start working on sir?” Forrest asked in an obvious attempt to steer the conversation to something more constructive.

  “You know how you mentioned we need people on the other end to answer the phone when we call?” Krantz asked.

  “Yes sir.” Forrest answered
. The look in his eyes and complete lack of enthusiasm in his response told Krantz that Forrest had already figured out what his assignment was going to be.

  “I need you to work on how you and your team are going to make it up to North Carolina to lead the action on the ground. I need you to work on how you’re going to communicate back to me to keep everything moving. You’ll be in charge of all the ground forces invading North Carolina. Congratulations on the promotion commander.” Krantz said. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure how promotions actually worked, but he could figure that out later. He needed someone he could trust in North Carolina. Forrest was the perfect fit for the position. Not only did he trust him, he also happened to be an experienced combat leader with a distinguished history as an officer in the Marine Crops.

  “Alright sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll go get started on that planning. Can’t wait to start getting all that commander pay direct deposited into my account.” Forrest said sarcastically before gathering his men and heading off to find a place for a planning session. Krantz glanced around to see who all was left. A few of his guards were standing around as well as Tom. He walked over to where Tom was leaning against a concrete wall staring at the rows of computer terminals blanketing the room.