The Dunbar Effect

By Jason Taverner

Richard Dunbar...The most prolific mass murderer in human history, perpetrator of dozens of massacres that usually end with his death-only with Dunbar there is always a next time.

 

The Kill Zone... Miles of wilderness and abandoned towns with walls built to quarantine a supernatural evil that n

• Language: English
• Publisher: JASON TAVERNER
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987623916

Book preview

The Dunbar Effect

Jason Taverner

Copyright © 2023 Jason Taverner

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First Edition

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written consent of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

ISBN: 979-8-9876239-1-6

ISBN: 979-8-9876239-0-9 (Print Edition)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023903568

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Will to Flower

XXVII

XXVI

XXV

XXIV

XXIII

XXII

XXI

XX

XIX

XVIII

XVII

XVI

XV

XIV

XIII

XII

XI

Ways of Being

1

X

IX

2

3

VIII

4

5

VII

6

7

8

VI

9

10

V

11

12

IV

13

14

III

15

16

17

II

18

19

20

21

22

I

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

37

38

39

Author Note

Acknowledgements

Will to Flower

XXVII - I

XXVII

Morning, Day 4

S

he awoke from a horrid dream. Abductors unknown had taken her to a frigid abattoir and fastened her to an iron bed. In the dim light they gathered, shadows with glowing eyes, and she wanted to cover herself as much to thwart their icy gaze as to counter the wintry chill.

Click-click-click… clack-clack-clack

Stretching her arms above her head and tugging her legs opposite, they were determined this bed would be a perfect fit.

Click-click-click… clack-clack-clack…

Her arms and legs screamed. Tendons and muscles frayed.

Click-click-snap!

The sleep twitch jerked her from an iron bed to the steel bed of a ’57 Chevy pickup truck.

Click-click-click… clack-clack-clack…

Johnny Cooke worked his ratchet beneath the hood of an AMC Matador police cruiser, part of a weeks-long restoration project. He planned to drive it out of here—here being a walled enclosure containing over 100 square miles known as the Kill Zone.

Bitterly cold, she’d drawn herself into the fetal position. The blankets covering her weren’t large enough to ward the chill in the cavernous garage. The cold intensified her soreness and gave fierce ache to a three-day-old crossbow bolt wound in her left thigh.

An unwilling visitor to a forbidden place, yesterday evening she’d stumbled through a thicket in her journey toward Sandalwood’s city limits. From the road outside, someone called out Gin? and she’d frozen in the brushwood because anyone who knew her name had come to kill her.

You can come on out, said the man of sixty-something years. He saw a young Korean-American woman and chuckled softly as he rubbed a hand against the stubble on his chin, little white hairs contrasting dark skin. Sorry, I thought you were someone else.

She wasn’t his friend Jim and no longer Gin, either. A day earlier, during her flight from the nearby town of Morgan, she found a patch of beautiful, fragrant lilies blooming next to a creek. Exhausted, she’d lain beneath the three-foot stalks and marveled at the reddish-orange and speckled brown petals. Since nothing in her new life could have any connection to the old, she’d christened herself Lily after the beautiful flowers that rekindled her determination to live.

The scent of coffee stirred her.

She slowly slid to the tailgate. Her left thigh felt like an under-used muscle after a seventy-two hour targeted workout. Through gritted teeth, she whispered, This is the worst.

Nutrition, so important for healing, remained elusive in the KZ. Her hunger had become a dull ache, omnipresent even in sleep. When she didn’t have nightmares about a supernatural killer unleashing waves of carnage, she dreamed of banquets and buffets, always out of reach.

Chilly this morn. How are you feeling? Johnny asked, his back to the kerosene lantern.

She touched her backpack to make sure it was still there, still full. She sort of trusted Johnny, but she was unsure of his much younger friend, Jim. He arrived yesterday evening hefting a container of gasoline and gave her a judgmental look-over. At twenty-three, she fit the Kill Zone thrill-seeker demographic. What else explained her presence in the lair of Richard Dunbar, known to the world as Agent Orange?

Well, you’re a mess, Jim said. He was around thirty and so good-looking her own condition suddenly horrified her. Wearing bloody, disheveled clothes, she smelled like a charnel house janitor. Aside from smudges of dirt, his dark clothes looked impeccably clean.

Anyone else we need to look for? he asked, and Lily could only shake her head.

Lily snapped back to the present. Johnny had asked her a question.

Just wonderful, she said. If he knew how she really felt, he’d renew talk of leaving together. He didn’t grasp the impossibility of it because she hadn’t told her story. If he knew her real name or how she’d gotten here, it would endanger him and his friend.

In silhouette, Johnny wiped his hands, saying, I had a dream about you last night. Oh, let me get you some coffee.

Where’s Jim? she asked.

She stood. Her left leg signaled its displeasure.

He left half an hour ago. By chance, are you from Portland, Maine?

Fear seized her hollow stomach. She thought she’d have time to talk to them this morning, make them understand they could never mention her under any circumstance.

Please stop asking where I’m from. Is Jim coming back?

No, but he won’t mention you. Do your parents live in Maine? No answer, eh?

Johnny, a recovery specialist, made illegal trips into the Kill Zone, chancing the notice of its sole resident, the gas-masked slayer Richard Dunbar. The evil began in the late 70s with Dunbar’s first rampage. Although Dunbar could die, he inevitably reappeared near the town of Morgan, sometimes within weeks, sometimes months. No one knew how or why Dunbar kept reconstituting after death to kill and kill again.

What the U.S. government couldn’t stop it tried to contain, so in the mid-80s it built walls around the town of Morgan and the nearby tourist attractions of Morgan Falls and Morgan Lake to trap Dunbar within the territory to which he seemed mystically tethered. Dubbed Agent Orange because he’d served in Vietnam when the herbicide was in use, Dunbar stayed within the walls and society seemed content with that. Unfortunately, in December 1996 he escaped the enclosure and wreaked murderous havoc on the nearby Sandalwood. As if he’d contaminated Sandalwood, the government forcibly evacuated the small city and hastily constructed walls around it. A 2004 expansion consumed the town of Westing, reason unknown.

Since the Sandalwood Slaughter Dunbar’s only victims were those who ventured into his domain for foolhardy reasons. However, the public didn’t know there were unwilling victims. Agency X collected random strangers from across the country and placed them in the Kill Zone as fodder for the killer. Maybe a mass casualty incident inside the KZ prevented an even bigger mass casualty incident outside the KZ. Last Friday Lily had been part of the chum—only this time the chum killed the shark.

Sometimes my dreams are hard to interpret, Johnny said as he handed her a mug of coffee. How about yours? Who’s Patrick?

Huh?

You dreamed, too. You talked to him in your sleep.

Oh. He’s… she trailed off, shaking. Patrick defeated Agent Orange, but didn’t cut off his head when he had the chance. A fatal error.

When they can find you no matter where you are and make you vanish without a trace, there’s no such thing as paranoia. They being Agency X, for lack of a proper introduction.

Patrick gave her much advice during their short time together.

He’s someone I knew, she finally replied.

The coffee left her shaken. This connection to the old world, warm and strong. She’d always hated the taste, but here any flavor was a precious commodity and she welcomed the bitterness. For a moment it fooled her stomach, landing with pleasant warmth as if pancakes and kimchee and eggs and bacon and sausage were on the way.

Dunbar get him?

You shouldn’t know anything about me. Seriously. Stop asking, she said, trying to maintain an even tone. Yesterday she’d told him she could never leave and Johnny gave her an impromptu survival quiz, one she failed miserably. Like the owl in daylight, she was in a world alien to her.

She regretted some of yesterday’s interactions. Fatigue, pain, and hunger pushed her beyond her limits. Petulant, fearful, and annoyed Johnny had caught her, she almost hadn’t followed him. Yesterday evening she’d been bitchy and cross.

You already know Dunbar isn’t the only thing that can kill you in here, he said.

She waited for elaboration, but realized he’d alluded to her wound. Johnny thought it the work of something other than Dunbar, maybe one of his numerous traps. Johnny couldn’t imagine a scenario where she encountered Agent Orange and lived. He only read the surface of what he saw, couldn’t see any deeper. Her story had far more layers.

Let’s lay it out there, Johnny said. You were with someone who died and you think you’ll get the blame when you leave, right?

"I don’t want to talk about it!" she snapped. Bitch mode came so naturally. Not a good default in any situation, much less one where she depended on the hospitality of strangers.

Johnny’s experience could be invaluable. He could teach her how to survive here. Maybe he and Jim could be resources, supply lines. If she didn’t alienate them.

No longer the fool, her stomach growled loudly.

Jim brought some jerky if you want them, he said.

Yes! Please. Thank you. Thank you. She bowed out of extreme politeness and scolded herself because, even though she spoke without an accent, bowing might show she was second generation Korean-American, taught her ancestral culture by immigrant parents.

They took seats on the Chevy tailgate. The old vehicle groaned.

Thank you, she said, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat to hide the emotion.

You are welcome. These aren’t a decade old; Jim had a stash nearby. What snacks I brought were gone by the time I found you. Plenty of coffee, though.

Thank you. And Jim, too.

Just so you know, in my other life I’m a pastor, so counseling is in my nature.

Her fingers fumbled with the package.

This is a Monday. It won’t open. It’ll be spoiled. Something’ll go wrong.

Uh-huh, she answered, as she finally tore the packaging. The scent of Teriyaki flooded her nostrils. She took a small bite so the treasure would last. She didn’t like beef jerky, but this was so good, so unbelievably good.

Leaving you here isn’t in your best interest, Lily. I admire your confidence, but you remember our conversation? Fire is the most important tool for survival, but it will bring Dunbar running. Without fire, you can’t cook.

The wavering flame in the kerosene lamp drew her eyes.

I know, and she said it from experience. The first night it wasn’t Agent Orange who’d kept her from starting a fire. The military arrived in force after Orange’s death. One of their trucks struck a deer and she’d used a knife to claim a leg for food. With Orange dead, she’d expected it would be a cinch to roast the meat over an open flame, but a fire would have exposed her. By the time morning arrived with daylight and enough fog to obscure the smoke and flames, she’d lost her prize in a tumble down an embankment.

Why does Jim come here? she asked.

He provides security. The people evacuated from Sandalwood with just the clothes on their backs and not much else? Some hire Jim to protect their belongings. People sneak in here to make big bucks. They say, ‘Why leave things to rot in the Waste Land?’ There’s a market for what’s called Murderabilia. Never liked any of that. Vulture culture.

Lily thought of the contents of her backpack. What might collectors pay for the mauler’s gas mask, his night vision goggles, some of his knives, or the hedge shears that beheaded him?

Her fingers touched the dwindling length of jerky. She’d gobbled most of the first one!

You’re still a couple of miles from Sandalwood. You ever smell sandalwood? He paused for a second and she shook her head, so he continued. It’s nice. Creamy and sweet, but strong. The wood holds its scent for a long time. Captain Stephen Morgan named the town after encountering sandalwood on a trip to India. He planned to grow it here and start a lucrative trade. Sell the oil. Use the wood for premium furniture. But you can’t grow oranges in Siberia and you can’t grow Sandalwood here. It’s a zone ten or eleven plant and we’re at the border of six-seven. Another problem? The tree is parasitic and needs a suitable host because it leeches nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous from the roots of another tree. So you need to plant it in the right zone and within a few yards of a host tree that gives the sandalwood what it needs. Growing sandalwood here was an idea fueled by wishful thinking. That’s how you get a town named for a tree that won’t grow within hundreds of miles.

She finished the first stick of jerky, her stomach nowhere near sated. She wanted to suck the juice from the wrapper but didn’t want to look pathetic. Maybe when he wasn’t watching…

Lily, this isn’t your zone and you don’t have a host. Life in the ruins is impossible without fire or food.

Yes, yes, she knew this, but Johnny or Jim could sell her Agent Orange items to make money for her. She could pay them for the danger. Surely there were safe places in the Kill Zone. She just needed food and a supply line, right?

This is your fourth day in the Zone. It will only get worse.

He thought she came here with friends. A bunch of out-of-towners who’d read books and articles about the Kill Zone or played the video games or watched the movies or saw the documentaries. Foolhardy and unaware of what they were getting themselves into. The locals probably had a name for her kind, and it wouldn’t be flattering.

She opened the second stick.

"If something happened, something that makes you scared to face the world outside, it’s nothing compared to dying in here. By the time you want to leave, you won’t be able."

Thanks, I hadn’t figured that out.

Ugh! What is wrong with me?

Jim’s looking for our friend. He’s been missing for a week and we know he’s in here. Somewhere. He’s the most experienced of us all. Some Dunbar kills with arrows, some with traps. The Zone isn’t a place where anyone can live. Everyone is a visitor except for Dunbar.

Lily nodded as she ate.

Yesterday, Jim was late. Before I set out looking, I prayed I’d find him safe.

The first night when Orange stalked the last few survivors, she’d prayed with Adam, a sixteen-year-old placed here with his parents. In a desperate moment, she and Adam promised God they’d be the best Christians ever if they were to survive. Ten minutes later, Agent Orange killed Adam with a spiked ball to the face. So much for prayers.

Turns out Jim didn’t need finding, Johnny continued, but someone else did.

Johnny insisted on helping her because he didn’t understand the situation. In his mind, she had no reason to stay. If she told him how she got here she’d endanger him, but if she told him nothing and he mentioned the suicidal Asian-American woman who refused to leave the KZ, wouldn’t he be in just as much danger?

She finished the jerky, her hunger barely dented. The jerky was an event, a day at an amusement park and now it was over and she had to go back to her wretched life.

Johnny let the silence sit between them like a prompt. She wanted to tell her story because it seemed like the only way to save him, but was this decision tainted by fatigue, hunger, and desperation? Was she in her right mind? Was telling him the right choice? She felt lucid, but sleep the past few nights had been fitful. Exhaustion gnawed her clarity the way hunger gnawed her stomach.

"I want to leave but I can’t, she said, and it sounded like a plea. Tears overcame her. She felt like a spectator watching someone else’s breakdown. There were eleven of us and they put us here for him to kill. It keeps him in here—having people to kill, that’s why they do it. The military is searching for me. If they find me, they’ll kill me because they can never let me tell what I know. If they know you know, they’ll kill you, too. I’m sorry, Johnny, I didn’t mean for you to see me. Tears muddied the dirt on her hands. Sorry. I’m losing my shit. So sorry."

Johnny patted her back as she sobbed.

XXVI

Morning, Day 4

H

and over hand, Johnny pulled the garage door chain. The panels creaked when they separated, but the rollers stayed strangely silent inside the greased guide rails.

Lily didn’t need to shield her eyes because dark clouds hid the sun. A steady rain beat the pavement. She breathed the cool air and considered the newest revelation from Johnny. Inside the Kill Zone were leech fields that drained power from batteries and disrupted electronic devices. These invisible areas slowly moved through the KZ and were usually several acres in size. Some could link and make larger disturbances. Last week, one settled on the garage and drained the AMC Matador’s newly installed battery. Johnny planned to let the car roll down the hill to a replacement battery.

Johnny slid a link into the chain keeper. It held the door high enough for the car’s siren and two roof-mounted lights to pass beneath.

Chilly, he said as he opened a black umbrella. Overnight the temperature dropped to the forties but rebounded to the current fifty-two.

Jim left something for you.

Johnny handed her a light-weight black garment with a flat finish. Jim’s hooded rain slicker. Jim hadn’t had an umbrella, just this. He’d sacrificed his comfort for her? Why? She’d been a bitch to him, too. You might try verbal irony instead of sarcasm. It’s nicer, he’d said.

Could you thank him for me? she asked. I’ll return it later.

No need. It’s a gift. You can thank him. He’s a good man.

The steady rain spattered the debris on the unkempt driveway. Covered with sticks large and small, and with wet leaves and weeds glistening, the driveway was in what Johnny referred to as controlled chaos. The seventy yard drive gently curved toward the distant street. In 1996, one could see the garage from the street. Since then, trees overtook the yard, hiding the garage and house behind a protective layer of foliage. Yet what concealed could also destroy and a large oak toppled onto the house, tearing a gash in the roof. Now full of mold, the house rotted from the inside.

You can check what you need. I won’t look back, he said.

Check what I… oh, the wound.

Johnny walked the driveway, turning fallen limbs with his foot as the rain spilled from his umbrella. No limbs were large enough the car’s undercarriage couldn’t pass over them. By moving the limbs parallel on the driveway, Johnny cleared a path for the car to roll beside them.

When he was several yards away, she unfastened her jeans and slid them to her knees. A folded piece of T-shirt tied by a thin strip of cloth covered the crossbow wound on her left leg. She gingerly pulled the bandage from the puncture, grimacing as it tore clotted blood from the wound. The discarded bandage landed atop the strip of cloth. No infection.

She fished a small bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizer from her pocket and squirted it onto the wound. She rubbed the cold liquid in a circular motion until it evaporated. Only one cloth bandage remained and she pressed it against the wound, tying it in place with another cloth strip. Only now did it sting.

It hurt to walk, but the leg wasn’t as stiff as when she’d climbed from the truck an hour ago. She’d felt pain like this before: a golf ball struck her right thigh when she was fifteen. This was more like a baseball.

She carefully eased the jeans upward.

A flash of movement in purple, green, and black caught her eye. A starling on the house gutter near a hole in the fascia. It took flight as she fastened her jeans.

As directed, she submerged the soiled bandages in a bucket of used motor oil to destroy her DNA if not hide the items outright.

She walked alongside the Matador. The front and rear of the car were black; the roof and doors white. It seemed nothing special to her, hardly a thing someone should risk his life to salvage. Although Johnny didn’t look like it, he pushed 70. How much longer could he do this?

A black wheelbarrow Johnny used to haul parts leaned against the wall. It took at least ten trips to restore the car, and each time Johnny risked running into Agent Orange.

Beneath the umbrella, Johnny moved sticks with his feet. Maybe he had a death wish. Or maybe he thought God protected him.

Maybe God is protecting me through him? she thought, and imagined an umbrella of righteousness hovering over Johnny, one that extended to her through proximity.

She planned to shelter at a secret place until they could extract her from the KZ. The thought of leaving scared the living daylights out of her, but her likelihood of dying in the zone soared once Agent Orange returned from the dead. He always reappeared in a restored body somewhere within the KZ. Even if he forgot the woman who’d killed him, how long could she evade him or his many booby traps?

Yet, if she fled the KZ, where could she go? She recalled Patrick’s words, What’s happened is a travesty. Yeah, you’re innocent and shouldn’t suffer like this, but there’s no return to the status quo for us. We have to be careful when we get out of here. Every facet of our old lives is a clue. Likes, dislikes, predilections. Everything we are is quantified. Think of these pieces of us as data breadcrumbs. The more new crumbs we leave, the more the blip on their radar becomes us. We won’t know when the agency makes the connection. We won’t know the last piece that tipped them off. We won’t even see them coming.

Her old life gone, she could never see or talk to her parents again. What she knew became her death warrant and, like an anti-umbrella, it extended over anyone in her proximity.

Now it’s your death warrant. Sorry, Johnny.

You look anxious. Often, our doubts betray us. Remember, in God we trust. It’s all in His hands, Johnny said as he closed the umbrella. He tossed it onto the passenger floorboard.

She’d stowed her backpack in the rear seat. She put on Jim’s rain jacket, grateful he’d let her borrow it. It would keep her dry on her journey to a temporary shelter, one with hidden snacks, water, and a phone so Johnny could contact her via text and set up an extraction.

She got into the driver’s seat.

The gear selector is here on the steering column. Pull it toward you and then to the right to get it into neutral. Go through the gate at the bottom of the driveway, turn right. You can stop anytime the rear of the car clears the gate. I’m right behind you. No power steering, so it’ll be tougher than you expect. The driveway is a four percent grade, so you shouldn’t roll fast.

The dashboard seemed too low tech for a police car.

Mind if we pray? He grinned. I’m gonna do it anyhow.

No, go ahead.

He bowed his head and prayed for protection and guidance. Again, he mentioned Jim and their missing friend, praying for their protection and the protection of the soldiers on maneuvers within the Zone. He finally named the missing pal: Cabot.

I’ll keep praying Cabot’s okay, Lily said afterwards.

He described Cabot in case she crossed his path. He emigrated from the UK in the mid-80s and still had a faint British accent. Whatever she’d told Johnny she could tell Jim or Cabot because the three of them were partners in all things Kill Zone.

Johnny paused for a new sound, something far away, but unsettling just the same. In the distance, civil defense sirens roared, a warning the drill continued.

This place is still locked down tight. No one comes in when we hear the sirens. This time they fooled us. We thought the drill ended.

Johnny went to the rear of the car and pushed. Through the rearview mirror, she saw him strain. It didn’t feel like the car would budge, but then it slowly crept forward. Rain drops appeared on the tip of the hood and slowly spread toward the windshield like entering a car wash in slow motion.

She directed the car to straddle a large limb by turning the taut wheel. Too bad she couldn’t turn on the radio, listen to a song—any song—to take away the edge.

Angling herself toward the mirror, she saw a haggard stranger as if becoming Lily literally transformed her.

The driveway gate didn’t seem wide enough for the car. She squinted to better gauge the opening and tapped the brakes. It didn’t influence the momentum. Her heart leaped. She crushed the brake beneath her foot. The car slowed incrementally.

Stiff brakes. Chill. Just freaking chill!

What if she emerged at the same time a military convoy passed?

Thick bushes grew along the gate and weeds at the roadside met drooping tree branches, blocking a wide view. She could only see the ancient, light grey two-lane street through the open gate.

Johnny hurried behind, scooting limbs to roughly approximate controlled chaos. Once the rain washed away the tire prints, the drive would look untouched.

The car rolled through the gate thanks to three feet of clearance on each side. Stress drained when she brought the car to a stop and put the gear selector in park. It left her shaking and weak as if she’d traversed a crumbling, one-lane mountain road.

What’s wrong with me?

She cried.

It’s because I’m going to be alone again.

She quickly wiped her face.

Don’t do this to him. Don’t do it! Be strong.

She exited the vehicle. Fog hovered above her. It concealed the treetops. Cold drops of rain spattered her face and neck.

You can do this. Fighting!

The ivy covering the gate muffled its rattle. Johnny tugged the gate in bursts. Lily wiped her eyes and smiled when she remembered him putting a little red Gideons Bible in the glove compartment, saying, One never knows what vehicle God will use to reach someone.

She grabbed the backpack out of the backseat. She slung the crossbow over her shoulder.

Gotta fix the gate, he mumbled. Got the map?

She tapped the slicker over her right jeans pocket.

What’s the pass code to the phone?

One-eight-six-two.

Good. The fog will cover us. Get there and rest.

Thank you. She hugged him and cried again. This was not like her; she was not a crier. Sorry. I guess it’s because everyone I meet here dies. You get out safely, please.

I’ve been doing this for years. I’ll be fine as long as the car doesn’t make a chitty-chitty-bang-bang when I start it. Stay close to cover and don’t touch anything that glows. A saying we have is: ‘Caution makes for many happy returns.’ Military activity is miles away and visibility low. The garage is unlocked if you think you can’t make it, but if you use the kerosene heater, open the vents. If I can’t get a hold of you by text and you aren’t at Sanctuary, I’ll come here. Should you run across Jim, be sure you ask about Cabot the first opportunity you get. Johnny smiled. If life is a race, you have a lot left to run, so hang in there. God has a plan for you.

A plan? Hard to believe there’d been any greater meaning beyond luck and her Korean heritage. Agent Orange saved her for last to relish killing an Asian. By then, he’d taken enough damage from her dwindling party he was susceptible to her hedge shears.

Johnny? Did your dream have a happy ending?

You and your grandmother were at the Forty-second Annual Greek Festival in Portland, Maine. You reunited with your parents for the first time in years. You were happy.

She smiled at the impossible dream. All four grandparents were dead by her early teens. She and her parents had no knowledge of Greek culture or any ties to Maine. The only Portland she’d visited was in Oregon, and she’d never even been east of the Mississippi River until now. Although it ended up signifying nothing, she appreciated the fate conjured by his subconscious, one where she didn’t end as an exiled orphan.

With the driver’s door open, Johnny pushed the vehicle until it started rolling. He jumped inside. The tires crunched along the gritty pavement, ever faster. She watched a moment longer and wondered if she’d ever see him again.

Lily set off in the opposite direction, a wanderer below the sea of fog.

XXV

Morning, Day 402

A

ware he’d have to leave the car on the street if the replacement battery didn’t work, Johnny lowered the heavy car hood, but didn’t let it land hard enough to latch. He opened the door, slid onto the bench seat, and inserted the key into the side of the steering column. If it worked, he wouldn’t need to use the tarp in the trunk.

Come on, make a joyful noise. Morty wants his car.

1, 2 and 3. He turned the key.

The engine tried to turn over repeatedly but didn’t quite make it. He stopped. Pumped the gas pedal twice. Tried again. The ignition almost caught. He stopped. Took a breath. Pumped the gas pedal once more. Turned it again. The engine roared to life. He fed it gas and cast an eye toward the rearview mirror where a plume of grey exhaust joined the thick fog overhead. Johnny put his left foot on the brake and eased the car into drive with his right foot ready on the gas pedal. The engine grumbled steadily.

Thank you, Lord.

An empty garage a half-mile away would get him closer to his exit while he still had the cover of fog, but he’d taken too many risks already, so he drove up the driveway to the garage.

He’d stage the car here until he could schedule a sanctioned entry into the Zone and extract it. As an EZ Permit holder, he could enter the Zone through select military checkpoints and under certain conditions. His entry fit none of the legal requirements.

He closed the garage door and set off on foot. The nearby leech field could stay stationary for months. Hopefully, it didn’t move and sap this battery before he returned.

Last year he salvaged Mortimer Morty Schieffelin’s 1964 cherry red Ferrari 250 GTO without touching the Tipo V12 engine. Johnny knew the location of a garage-kept 1995 Ford F-450 tow truck in downtown Sandalwood. The challenge was in finding the truck’s owner for permission to salvage it. What, are you crazy? led to permission to not only use the truck but the old garage/auto body shop where it was abandoned. Johnny spray-painted the garage windows and sound-proofed the place as best he could. Nervous work. One never knew where Richard Dunbar lurked, but the killer stuck to Morgan unless he got the itch for killing. The most nerve-racking part had been approaching the military checkpoint even though he’d given them a heads-up he planned on driving out. Soldiers on duty might view an approaching F-450 as Richard Dunbar’s mobile bomb. Johnny stopped a quarter mile short and rode a bike to the checkpoint to explain the situation and show the writs of salvage signed by the legal owners of each vehicle.

Johnny made it a mile on foot before a familiar sound proved the prudence of stowing the Matador. He ducked beneath a tree as a helicopter passed low over the treetops. The waning fog intermittently obscured it.

Not far from here, he’d leave the road via a Madison Creek tributary. Madison wound around the knobs near the Westing Annex, the newest section of territory ceded to Dunbar’s demesne. Johnny knew several ways into the Westing Annex through the old Sandalwood wall.

He passed two more houses before he heard a low rumble. Not a helicopter this time. He paused, tilted the umbrella to his right. Listened. Yes, something approached from the direction he’d come. Had the helicopter spotted him and sent a ground unit?

Though he couldn’t see the vehicle around the bend in the road, it sounded close. He hastily retreated to the back porch of the nearest house. He eyed the doorway for traps. Nothing between the storm door and heavy wooden door except broken glass. Johnny eased it open. He pulled out his hand-crank flashlight and aimed it into the crevice where the door separated from the jamb. No wires above or below. With the collapsed umbrella, he pressed against the door until it creaked.

Johnny slipped through the doorway. His flashlight found nothing of note other than overturned chairs and a pot on the kitchen floor. He traversed the kitchen and killed the flashlight upon entering the living room. Tattered curtains fluttered from the breeze through a broken windowpane.

An HMMWV slowly passed on the street outside. The tall weeds in the overgrown front yard partially obstructed the view of the house. Still, he didn’t dare move. The slow speed had an indefinable wrongness, this no random patrol. Had someone seen him?

Something rumbled toward the house.

When the HMMWV passed, Johnny stepped forward and tried to look down the street. Too many trees blocked his view. The rumble grew. Almost here…

A double-axle dump truck followed by an asphalt vehicle. Pavement patching.

Last Saturday morning, Jim told him Richard Dunbar had expired overnight. The military only performed maintenance runs when Dunbar couldn’t threaten them, so this confirmed it.

Johnny returned to the kitchen and found a sturdy, uncomfortable chair for the wait.

He heard chopper blades and thought of Lily, out there, somewhere. He closed his eyes to pray, but the choppers distracted. In his mind’s eye, he saw a throng of people at the gate, a churning sea of desperation. He searched their faces, looking for a flower amongst them. Where are you?

The chopper lifted off.

XXIV

Morning, Day 4

K

orsky? No… Sikorsky. No, that’s not it, either.

Yo, Siri, what’s the big helicopter with two rotors? Lily asked her empty palm.

Checking my sources, Lily answered. Okay, I found this on the web for ‘What’s the big helicopter with two rotors?’

Thanks, but I don’t have Wi-Fi.

Okay, I found this on the web for ‘I don’t have Wi-Fi.’

So Siri, I haven’t bathed in days, worn the same clothes since Saturday, and hiked for days. How granola am I?

Okay, I found this on the web for ‘Gradations of Puget Sound hippies.’

Siri, does pretending to have a conversation with a pretend phone mean I’ve lost my sanity?

You know to question your sanity, so it means you’ve not lost your sanity. When you don’t know to question your sanity, that means you’ve lost your sanity. Does this help?

I reason, therefore, I am sane.

At the intersection of Barker Street and Electric Avenue, a large military helicopter had crash landed in the middle of the street, taking out a telephone pole and the traffic lights. Half a block down Barker, a parking lot had ample space for this beast to land, or maybe it took off there and went down afterwards. Now it was a burned-out hulk pockmarked with bullet holes, another rusting bit of apocalyptic landscape.

The military had mounted a Chicken Exit phone painted in the typical fluorescent orange on the street corner mere yards from the wreckage. When a jail cell became preferable to death, a trespasser called for military extraction from one of the call boxes spread throughout the KZ. If she placed a call, she wouldn’t live long enough to see a temporary cell.

Chinook! The helicopter was a Chinook. She smiled as if remembering were a battle won. There weren’t many victories to be had, so she took them whenever, however.

A white van parked lengthwise in the middle of the street had a large orange X spray-painted on its side, reminiscent of FEMA operations following natural disasters. Clockwise from the top, the code in the branches of the X were 7/5/08, NE, 4-4, and AO, whatever all that meant—well, she knew what AO referred to.

The rear doors of the van were solid, no windows, and it creeped her out so she gave it wide berth, eyeing it warily in case someone hid behind it.

Oh.

Twenty yards beyond the van in the center of the road, a naked man seated on a chair. Head slumped, wet hair matted to his skull, he didn’t fall off because his arms were tied behind his back.

Jim?

She looked around. There were plenty of places for attackers to hide. She pulled the crossbow from her shoulder and almost dropped it. Hardly a fearsome display of prowess.

Shaking, she approached the guy cautiously, aiming the crossbow in his direction in case this was a feint. She got close enough to see his hands weren’t tied with rope or wire. There was something unnatural about the placement; the hands flat against each other at the base of the chair, bloody palms out.

His back was arched away from the seat back, knees thrust outward. His ankles were wired to the front legs of the chair. Now that she knew he wasn’t pretending, she whirled around to make sure no one approached. Whirling relit the pain in her thigh like a Christmas tree.

Gritting her teeth against the ache, she quickly limped toward him, looking for tripwires.

Hey!

Rounding the front of the chair, she saw the guy was built well, lean, muscular. Though she couldn’t see much of his face from this angle, she recognized Jim.

You awake?

She nudged his knee but didn’t get a response.

Wet hair was matted above his right ear where something struck hard enough to break the skin. She pushed his forehead with the heel of her palm.

Jim? she asked.

His left eye and cheek were swollen, his nose bloody, and his lower lip swollen and split at one end. A string of bloody snot and drool extended to his hairy chest.

Jim?

A deep gasp startled her.

Nyuh.

His right eyelid fluttered. The eye swirled in its orbit before finding her. He smiled.

"Femina pulchra… Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga?"

Huh? I don’t know Italian or whatever you just said.

His eye closed ever so slowly, and he continued his half-smile, maybe elated because he mistook her for a rescuer.

Despite the cold air and rain, he didn’t shiver. Hypothermia.

A mile or more remained between her and her destination, but that was just a guess. Even if he could walk, he might go into cardiac arrest before getting there.

His ankles were tied with wire. She needed to loosen them, but first she looked at his hands and gasped. Whoever did this hadn’t wired his hands—they’d impaled them with a single nail. She gripped the head. It wouldn’t budge. Dragging him in the chair may put too much strain on his hands and if the chair broke, she’d have an even bigger problem with him nailed to its sturdiest section.

Jim? Can you stay awake?

She tried to keep her eyes averted from his groin, but something caught her attention.

Oh my God. She put the back of her hand against her mouth.

A nail driven through his scrotum pinned it to the seat of the chair.

Think. Think!

She needed tools to pry the nails loose. A wire Santa sleigh with reindeers dangled from a nearby roof. The owner would have had a ladder, a ladder implied tools.