Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗

Connor couldn’t pick a thing out of the gray mist.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

“Maybe it’s my imagination then, but I could have sworn…” Doug frowned as he worried the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “Do you think that was just a coincidence, that attack?” Doug asked.

Connor shook his head.

“Do you think Mike or Seffie could have been the ones who sabotaged your sailboat on the way here?”

“And helped with that ambush? No way.”

“Are you sure?”

Connor thought about it. They had started with fourteen people from Mexico. Odds were better that the saboteur had died than been one of the three of them to survive, except the saboteur would also have been prepared when things went wrong.

“It’s possible, but my gut says no. Mike and I scouted all over South America. I trust him with my life, owe him my life. It’s not Mike. I don’t know Seffie that well but Mike vouched for her. That’s good enough for me.”

Doug looked at him for a moment, then said, “Okay. Let’s get back to the others.”

Connor cast an uneasy glance over his shoulder before he jumped down from the fallen redwood. The soft carpet of needles felt springy under his feet. The last time he had been in a redwood forest the day had been hot, the dry air filled with the astringent smell of sap and dust. Today a wet fog hugged the ground, concealing the landscape in a shroud.

They had traveled ten miles from the reservoir over what was left of the tumble-down road without incident. They had stopped a few times to give the Humvee a push, or to shift rocks, fallen trees, and the occasional car out of the way. An hour ago they yielded for a pack of wolves. The shaggy patriarch paused to assess them, his yellow eyes wary but unafraid, before leaping over the derelict concrete divider in the center of the road. Although wolves had repopulated their historic range over the past ten years, sightings of the shy creatures were still rare.

Connor found himself wishing there were more obstacles in their path. A nice little land slide or a small traffic pileup. Not bad enough to put them in danger but complex enough to take a little time to figure out. The immediacy of a problem to be solved, a dilemma-free shared goal, was the only time the fractiousness among the group faded. Once the way was clear, the slow percolation of anger and division returned.

Connor had spent enough time in the wilderness to know it was not unusual to go for days, sometimes weeks, without coming across zombies. The world was still a big place. But for it to be this clear so close to the largest known population center anywhere? These mountains were supposed to be crawling with zombies, but since Los Gatos, they had seen no sign.

From the corner of his eye, he saw movement. Connor turned, gun raised. A lone deer regarded him solemnly. He relaxed and it bounded off through the brush. It’s not all monsters all the time. He turned back to see Doug, barely visible ahead of him. Hurrying, he started off at a trot, but his foot came down on nothing where he expected the ground to be. It was another twelve inches before his boot connected but on a downward slope. Connor pitched forward and fell head over heels, tumbling down before landing with an ooof!

When his feet hit the ground again, Connor heard a snap. A net shot up from below him, the edge catching him at the waist. He twisted away, grabbing a tree root, but the fog made the bark slick. His lower body lifted higher. The tighter he clung to the root as he fought the pull of the net, the more his fingers seemed to slip. He scrambled for a better grip. His hand slid more, another inch—

“Gotcha!”

Doug caught his forearm and after a bit of tugging, pulled him free.

“Are you okay?” Doug panted from the exertion of the sprint he had just made. Despite the close call, his blue eyes flashed with excitement.

He’s an adrenaline junkie, Connor realized as he looked sideways at Doug, but somehow the thought did not disturb him.

“Thanks.” Connor stood and brushed himself off. The empty net dangled twenty feet above the ground. “What the hell is that doing here?”

“There aren’t supposed to be any people up here.” Doug’s mouth turned down as Connor gave him a hand up. “As far as we know.”

“That wasn’t set by a zombie.”

Doug’s face grew pensive. “Don’t tell the others about this.”

“But—”

“We have enough to worry about without throwing human traps into the mix. When we need to, we’ll tell them, but we keep this to ourselves for now.”

Connor was not sure if it was the look on his face or the tone of his voice, but he knew Doug used human not to describe who set the trap, but what it was meant to catch. Connor had not just walked into the net, but tripped on uneven ground that sent him tumbling into it. Only the ground had not looked uneven. He looked back up at the net.

“Why do you think that was set for people?” he asked, hoping his growing suspicion was wrong. “Anything could get caught in it.”

“Most animals would make a lot of noise if they got caught in that. Would you scream for help knowing it would attract zombies?”

Connor couldn’t argue with Doug’s logic. He walked back up to where he had stumbled and squatted down for a closer look. The damp earth showed sharp, slightly curved marks along the vertical edge where he had fallen.

“Here’s where I tripped, dug out with a shovel. If that net had been another foot over, it would have gotten me.”

“Come on, we better move it. The others will think something happened to us.”

As they started back, it occurred to Connor that somehow, Doug had missed the trap completely. “How did you miss it?” he asked.

Doug pointed at the disturbed trail of pine needles that began next to the tree where Connor had fallen. “I went around the other side.”

With the road now in sight, Connor slid sideways down the steep grade, one hand trailing the rocky soil for balance. His boots hit the ground with a thump. He took a deep breath to clear his mind, to stay alert despite his relief at the illusion of safety the Humvee represented.

He couldn’t bring the ghost train of cars that jammed 17’s northbound lanes to San Jose into focus. The fog was so dense all he could see were indistinct shapes. Connor feared there might be zombies trapped in those cars, strapped into seat belts they could never break free of, but there were no moans.

You should be relieved there are no zombies, he told himself, but their absence made him paranoid. There had been no threat from the other side of the road so they had not stopped to investigate. Satisfying his curiosity wouldn’t get them to Santa Cruz any quicker, but he couldn’t ignore the foreboding that settled heavier in his stomach with every meter they covered. Even before his narrow escape from the net, everything about these