Odyssey Read online

  Thunk.

  The blade bit into something harder than earth.

  * * *

  “Phew,” Homer whistled quietly.

  He had just backed up to the edge of the hole Sarah made by removing a foot of soil from the top of the five-by-five-foot plot. As she dragged away the top of a plastic covering, revealing a heavy-duty plastic storage container beneath, a powerful smell of ammonia wafted up at them.

  Sarah responded to his whistle almost as quietly, as she wedged open the twin lids of the container against the last clods of earth. “There’s long-life food inside. And you wouldn’t believe what bears can smell. Luckily, they’re equally sensitive to the smell of cleaning products. And they don’t like them much. Hungry?”

  Reaching inside, she came out with an energy bar, then tore the foil top off and handed it up. The last hot meal they’d had, in the cabin, was a good six hours behind them. But Homer knew how to remain operational for long stretches, which usually meant working now, looking after himself later. He jammed the bar into a vest pouch with a couple of empty rifle magazines. He had a few too many of those, after their battle on the boat, trying to get off Lake Michigan alive – and then the fight to escape the cabin, the team fleeing just ahead of most of the former population of the nearby town.

  He took a last look at the forest around them, tuning in, trying to sense anything amiss, straining for any trace of a sound, or of movement. Still nothing. So he flipped his NVGs up, slung his weapon, leaned in – and started pitching in, helping to hump the supplies. It was a good quarter-mile back to the truck, and there was a lot to move, even if they weren’t taking it all.

  The buried supply container went five feet in every dimension, including depth. Inside, Homer could see pallets of water bottles, more dry goods, a hand axe, a med kit, some blankets. As they dug things out and started making trips back, he also noticed a solar charger, a box of radio batteries – along with two radios – as well as what looked like a fuel pump.

  One thing he didn’t see was ammo.

  Not until they were near the bottom. Finally, beneath the extra stuff they were leaving behind, he could see what looked like boxes of 5.56mm and 12-gauge shotgun shells, as well as .40ACP pistol rounds. Homer stole a glance at the handgun on Sarah’s belt – he had mistaken it for a Glock 17 in 9mm, but now realized it was a Glock 22 in .40ACP. His esteem for her ratcheted up a notch.

  He also intuited her logic in stacking the supplies – heaviest lowest, as they were likely to be buried a long time, if not forever. But it wasn’t what you would call a combat load-out – the items you’re going to need most urgently on top.

  He could see Sarah rummaging around again, finally coming out with a rudimentary tactical rig, more of a hunting vest, which she shrugged into. But it had big pockets in front, which she filled with four mags for her own rifle. Then she pulled out a light jacket and pulled it over the top of that. It wasn’t exactly warm after dark in late autumn in Michigan.

  While he watched her do this, Homer paused to take a breath, gathering his energy for the last and heaviest hauling. It had already been a really long mission. But one thing SEALs know how to do is carry on when exhausted – digging down, over and over again if necessary, as many times as it took.

  As he inhaled, Homer could actually smell the banana PowerBar stuck into his vest, inches below his chin. When Sarah finished kitting up, she leaned back down into the cache, coming up with a cardboard ammo box in each hand, stacking them beside her on the ground. But when she looked up at him again, she froze. And Homer realized she wasn’t looking at him at all.

  She was looking around past him.

  Something snorted – a low, deep, wet sound.

  Her eyes went to his vest, or rather to that torn-open PowerBar – and Homer could make out her mouthing a single word: Shit. But then she put up a hand, palm out, its meaning unmistakable: Don’t move.

  Homer moved anyway, slowly, rotating a half-inch at a time. As he came to rest facing the opposite direction, he did so just in time to see the darkness come to life. A colossal, sloping, and implausibly enormous dark-brown shape loomed out of the forest and lumbered to the edge of the clearing. It made no sound as it moved – until it snorted again. This time, it wasn’t just a noise. It was a threat.

  A mean, vicious, arrogant one.

  Homer backed away slowly, moving his hands to his rifle and bringing it up an inch at a time. In a few seconds, he had the hole between him and the invader – and, just as importantly, he had Sarah behind him.

  Until she stepped out beside him, bringing her own rifle up.

  Homer reached over and pushed her barrel down, but she resisted. Sarah’s weapon was unsuppressed, and Homer didn’t want her shooting. Hell, Sarah probably didn’t want Sarah shooting. The sound of that thing banging away could draw anything, from anywhere. It could bring the horde down upon them, perhaps even the entire undead lynch mob still back at her burned-down cabin.

  But there was also zero guarantee that Homer engaging the threat alone would do anything other than piss it off even more than it already was. The 5.56x45mm rounds in his rifle were extremely high-velocity, and would almost certainly penetrate the thick hide, the deep layers of fat and muscle, and maybe even the harder and thicker skull. But at nearly point-blank range, they wouldn’t have time to get up to their full speed, they wouldn’t be tumbling yet, and worst of all, they would make very small holes.

  It would be like poking the beast repeatedly with an ice pick.

  This was a job for a high-powered hunting rifle, or a handgun with insane muzzle energy, like a .44 (or larger) Magnum.

  Homer knew if there was any way they could get out of this situation without turning it into a shooting gallery, their life expectancy would be massively improved. He shot a glance down into the cache – where virtually all the ammo was still stacked. But he had exactly one second for that, his eye darting back to level again, then significantly higher, as…

  The thousand-pound grizzly reared up on its back legs, towering over them like a mythological monster, standing nine feet tall if it was an inch. And then it roared at a volume that called to mind King Kong more than Smokey Bear. The close-quarters bellow left Homer and Sarah’s ears ringing, deposited a mist of hot spittle on their faces, and delivered an unmistakable message:

  This is my house. And you are not guests – you are lunch.

  Even as the two tiny bipeds padded slowly backward, Homer knew there was no way they could outrun this massive predator. Turning away was a nonstarter – they’d be filleted from behind in seconds. But in two steps more they had backed into the trees at the rear edge of the clearing. This left a single option.

  The decision had been made for him.

  Homer settled the red dot of his holographic sight on the bear’s right eye socket. But the angle wasn’t great, and when that monster fell forward… Nonetheless, he was pretty much all out of Plan Bs, so he began taking the slack out of his trigger—

  When a shriek tore the fabric of the night, drowning out the fading growl of the sedan-sized bear. A body landed on the grizzly’s head from behind, frenzied hands seizing and clawing at its face. The bear went berserk, crashing down on all fours, slinging its head around on its sinuous neck, both giant front paws reaching up to tear this newly arrived monstrosity off it.

  Foxtrot, Homer thought.

  One of the new breed of hyper-fast, hyper-violent, manic, infect-and-run dead guys. These things had nearly made an end of Alpha team in Chicago. There had also been a few in the attack on their boat on the lake, and the later assault on the cabin. However, this was…

  Foxtrot on a grizzly bear.

  That was definitely a new one. Homer had certainly never seen it. Probably no one had. Luckily, he hadn’t survived nearly two decades of operational deployments, followed by two years of ZA, by reacting slowly. He grabbed Sarah’s elbow to haul her out of the clearing, get them both hauling ass to anywhere but there. But even as they bo
th pivoted, and dug in to run, the night came alive on three sides of the clearing, dark figures racing in from the darker blackness of the forest.

  Runner pack. Regular old fast ones.

  As many as a dozen high-speed dead were now swarming out of the woods on fast forward, from the direction of the overrun cabin, as well as the town itself. Yep, the horde had found them, fastest ones first. They must have been close to start with.

  And grizzly roars carry.

  After Chicago, Homer figured he’d seen everything. Even in this horrible frozen moment, he remembered his teammate Juice saying something like: Yeah – should have known better.

  They were now surrounded.

  But it didn’t matter. The runners, impossible to tell how many in the manic blurring dark, didn’t even spare a glance for the two crouching, unmoving, silent living humans – instead flashing across the clearing and straight at the thrashing, shrieking, roaring Foxtrot-on-Grizzly battle. In seconds, the first of them swarmed the rampaging bear, grabbing and clawing and biting into heavy folds of skin and flesh, digging around or tearing away the thick covering of fur.

  To them, Sarah and Homer were dead.

  And then, just as quickly, they were gone, leaping away into the black forest, over fallen trees and stumps and through underbrush, low-hanging limbs flashing at their faces, as the sounds of the real-time slaughter receded behind them.

  When it seemed like they weren’t going to die in the next few seconds, Sarah hissed across at him: “We left all the ammo.”

  Homer shook his head. “Yeah. No. We don’t want any part of that.”

  This was so obvious when said out loud, Sarah evidently had no response other than to start laughing uncontrollably, which provoked choked giggles in Homer, as well. What they had just witnessed was so bizarre it was actually funnier than it was scary, certainly now that they had survived it. By the time they reached the truck, both were half-doubled over, clutching stomachs and mouths, trying to stifle the uncontrollable laughter like a couple of badly behaved third-graders.

  It was combat-stress laughter. Not Homer’s first.

  Sarah threw herself into the driver’s seat along with her rifle, put the truck in neutral, and began rolling them back down the hill, even as Homer pulled shut the door on his side. Their sputters finally petered out, not least because there was no windshield to mute them, and broadcasting their location, even at this distance, was a bad idea.

  As Sarah navigated in the near-blackness, Homer could see her breathing still rose and fell, quick and shallow, as almost anyone’s would. His had already come back to normal – both from his razor-edge of fitness, which meant he regained his on-the-floor resting heart rate faster than mere mortals, and also from biofeedback techniques, which he used to stay calm in situations in which nobody ought to be calm.

  Finally Sarah twisted the wheel, spun the truck around, started the engine, and rumbled them off the forest track and onto hardball – the local rural state route. The clouds had cleared somewhat, leaving enough ambient moon and starlight to drive by. And, in that ghostly glow, Homer could see Sarah’s face in profile. Her belly laughs were gone.

  And what had taken their place was worry – or even remorse. She looked as if she had let him down, already.

  “Don’t worry about the ammo,” Homer said. “I’ve still got a few rounds. But my supply of teammates is down to one right now – you’re the only one I’ve got left to watch my back. And I can’t have you getting eaten by a bear.”

  Her smile began to creep back. “Then eaten by the dead.”

  “Exactly,” Homer said. He paused to take the nearly disastrous PowerBar out of his vest and take a bite off the end. “And you’re no good to me packed inside a grizzly… stuffed inside a Foxtrot.”

  A critical principle of special operations was that it was never about the weapons or gear, the technology or toys. It was always about the training, and mindset – and, mainly, about the operator underneath it all. It was always all about the people. It was just lead and brass they’d left behind, a few grains of black powder. Feeling the cool breeze on his face in the starlight, Homer remembered for the thousandth time:

  It’s people who are the point.

  The Road

  The midnight blacktop hissed and droned under their tires.

  Homer let Sarah drive. For one thing, it was her truck. For another, he had no attachment to being the driver, or being in control – certainly not because he was a man. Every day for the last two years he had worked hand-in-glove, mission after can’t-fail mission, with a certain Sergeant First Class Aaliyah Khamsi. If that experience hadn’t driven home the fact that women could achieve as much as men – 150,000% more than 99.9% of men, in fact – then nothing would.

  And regarding Sarah, even in her short time with Alpha team, Homer had seen her demonstrate her own capability, skills, and resolve – and they were well beyond the level of most people, ones with any shape plumbing.

  A case could have been made for Homer taking the wheel, with his NVGs. With the limited ambient light, plus the danger of drawing attention by running the headlights, and finally the entire world’s roads being dotted with vehicles abandoned in haste when their occupants turned mid-drive, the driving might actually be the most hazardous aspect of their journey. But driving under night-vision was a delicate dance, one that took some getting used to. In fact, it took formal training and operational experience to be done safely. Ruts in the road could look like protrusions, and vice versa. Shadows often loomed out of the darkness like giant objects.

  There was also the critical factor that Homer had only so much power in the NVG’s batteries. And the time could easily come when he’d need them for something more urgent than driving. Right now Sarah was at the wheel, and it was going okay.

  Some things you just had to let go.

  One of the gifts of Homer’s religious faith was it left him able to do that, to leave things in God’s hands. To train and prepare relentlessly, to focus and perform to the limits of his abilities every time out, to trust in his teammates – but then to relax and leave the outcome in the hands of a higher power.

  “There will be some gun stores along the way,” Sarah said, breaking the silence. “Ones that haven’t been cleaned out. This is America, after all.”

  Homer settled back in his seat. “Probably. But every stop we make puts us at risk. Anyway, trust me – the last thing we want to be doing on this trip is shooting.” He nodded at her unsuppressed rifle in the footwell. “Back in the teams, we had a saying: ‘Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.’ A good corollary might be: ‘Unarmed is quiet, quiet is safe.’”

  Sarah exhaled, seeming to see the wisdom of this. “Before yesterday, I think I fired that rifle about twice in two years. Still, I’d much rather have ammo and not need it…”

  “Yeah,” Homer said. “Than need it and not have it. But, you know what, by the end of the pre-ZA wars, I was going out with exactly four spare rifle mags – down from twelve. And I almost always came back with two and a half left. And that was on nights when we did get into gunfights.”

  Sarah nodded. “Okay. Tell me why.”

  Homer smiled. Good student. “Only shoot at what you can hit, and hit what you shoot at. Do that, and you’ll be surprised how few rounds you need. In the teams, we were expected not just to aim – but to hit. Also, in the ZA, the more you shoot, the more dead you draw. Which means no amount of ammo will be enough. ”

  “Check.”

  Homer smiled at this, as the truck picked up speed. It seemed they were already something like a team.

  And they were on their way.

  * * *

  “Three hundred miles.”

  “Sorry?” Homer had allowed the silence to come back, deep within the cocoon of the night, the only sounds the shushing of the tires on the road, and the wind whipping in the absent windshield. When Sarah spoke again, he’d been off in his head.

  She said, “We’ll get about three hundr
ed miles per tank at highway speeds in this thing.”

  He saw where she was going with this, so he woke up his forearm-mounted digital mapping unit and pinched and dragged, until he had the planning inputs he needed. “Looks like this journey is about seven hundred miles – if we happened to be riding on a crow. But by the most direct highway route, we’re looking at about nine hundred fifty.”

  Sarah nodded. “So that means we’re also looking at filling up three times. And as you said…”

  “Yeah. Stops are dangerous.”

  “There may be some siphoning in our future.”

  “Got a hose?”

  “Totally,” Sarah said. “If you’ve got the suck.”

  Homer’s smile crinkled the corners of his blue eyes. “Absolutely. SEALs always say: If it doesn’t suck, we don’t do it.”

  Sarah slowed before making a right-hand turn off the state route, and onto the slip road for Interstate 96, heading east. But then she stopped entirely. The onramp was a parking lot. Clearly, a lot of people had tried to escape by this route – and failed.

  “Headlights?” she asked.

  Homer got her meaning. Navigating this was going to be tricky. But it was also just about the last place they wanted bright light – they were going to be inches from other abandoned vehicles, if they could get through at all. He did a quick 360 from the passenger seat, wishing they had front and rear windshields, instead of big open holes. But grateful they at least had side windows they could roll up.

  “Another onramp?” he asked. “Next exit up?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No guarantee the next one will be any better. Also, I think we need to get moving, get on the highway. These state routes are too dangerous.”

  Unfortunately, Homer didn’t think she was wrong. But he stole a look across at her, also wondering if she was running away from something, which he could understand; or perhaps running toward something.