Page 113 of Doomsdate

“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.”

The convoy in front of us begins to move, and with a tremulous breath, Maisie throws the SUV into gear. Behind us, Mom and Dad squeeze into the cab of another plow-mounted army truck and follow.

It doesn’t take long to hear the groaning.

We drive on grass to reach Washington Road. The trees to our right light up with flashes of electricity, followed by the occasional scream. The electrified perimeter is visible in patches as we slowly follow the convoy, driving parallel to the northern front lines. I search the darkness for glowing eyes and hungry mouths.

A gunshot makes me jump, then another. A loud, hissing crackle’s audible through our windows. The walkie-talkie flares to life.

“Come in, this is Convoy Leader Jo-Jo, the northern perimeter line has been breached. I repeat, the line has been breached.”

A pause.

A heavy breath. Then, “Prepare for swarms.”

“Light ’em up, people!” Dad’s voice bellows through the radio. “Go, go, go!”

“Do you see anything?!” Maisie surges forward until she’s almost plow-to-bumper with the convoy truck in front of us.

“No, nothing, except—” I squint into the darkness, sweat collecting in my palm where I clutch the military-grade Taser wand. Something skitters along the ground, so fast it could be the wind, ruffling the grass. I’m about to say so when glittering eyes rise from the ground, lifting ominously upward, one pair, two pairs, twenty pairs, a hundred. A plague of glowing white eyes.

A body batters my window. The door. The trunk. With a shriek, Maisie juices the plow. Five squirming, crawling bodies are thrown back instantly, thunking against the pavement like sacks. The convoy truck in front of us lurches forward, bodies raining upon it, sliding off, now unexpected speed bumps that Maisie screams each time we crunch over.

They are fast. Gaunt things, eaten things, hungry things. The glow of their horrible disease wet and visible through open wounds, missing limbs, gaping holes. The remains of a fist pound the glass beside my head, and I scream as the swollen flesh bursts against my window. A spray of shimmering gore, the rot thick and coming in through the air vents, enough to make us gag.

I roll the window down just enough to stab my Taser at the thing. When it climbs toward the roof, I deliver the surge to its heart.

A clump of dark limbs jumps on the truck in front of us, as if all belonging to one many-legged beast. The vehicle rocks to the side, the soldiers’ urgent instructions suddenly audible as a door is opened, then ripped from its hinges. Soldiers pour out the side like blood from a wound, falling upon the darkness punctured by shining eyes. Tasers light up. Bodies fall. The convoy truck lurches over the embankment, no one left to steer it.

Mom’s voice now. “Plan B, sweethearts—go, now! Don’t look back!”

With great, heaving breaths, Maisie goes. The SUV peels forward, crunching over more downed zombies. A loud crack sounds overhead. Something’s hit a solar panel—fuck! Can’t worry about power now, can’t worry about anything except getting out of here alive. The SUV screeches onto Stony Lonesome Road. The reservoir’s up ahead. The athletic fields just past it.

The worst is yet to come.

“Plan B!” Maisie yells at me over the sound of zombies pelting the car, human-sized hail. “Come on!”

“Right!” I shakily connect my phone to the modified speaker hopefully still strapped to the top of the car.

“Don’t let me down, Christian Slater.” I grit my teeth, then press play.

Music booms from Maisie’s roof. The opening drums cascade into crunchy guitar as the Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation” crashes across West Point’s campus. A zombie, perfectly framed in my window, releases its grip on the car and falls away, as if it doesn’t love Gen X rock anthems that came out before I was born, so weird. In front of us, the growing swarm seems to falter.

I laugh, incredulous. “It’s working! They’re afraid of loud noises, just like Julio said!”

The swarm changes direction, away from us, away from the Pump Up the Volume soundtrack blaring through our speakers. They spill across the road, down toward the reservoir, and I do what my parents expressly forbade.

I turn around.

A loud splash. I watch as the headlights of my parents’ truck sink into the water. An arc of blue current dances over the truck’s roof as their electrified plow plunges below the surface. My heart jolts in my chest, as if I can feel the electric current traveling through the water all the way from here. Two large white-suited figures exit the truck and jump into the water.