SurvivorZ: Grave Harbor

3

MIKE

"Damn, I could really go for a brandy," Lloyd muttered.

Mike Edwards squeezed his arms tighter around his chest, trying to fight off another round of shivers. His sentry partner's offhanded statement hit a little too close to home for the recovering alcoholic. After the former Boston PD officer lost his badge and his girlfriend, he had tried going cold turkey once before. He made it almost four days before the shakes and the throbbing in his chest and skull became so bad that he had no choice but to drown the pain.

Now, according to his wristwatch, he was officially sober for thirteen days, ten hours, and fifty-three minutes. It felt like a fucking eternity.

"Yeah," he sighed. "I know what you mean."

Lloyd Pruett placed his binoculars down on the roof of Harvard's FAS Research Computing building and blew some warm air into his cupped hands. Mike tucked his under his armpits and watched a wedge of geese flying across the smoky, grey sky. With the winter creeping up on them, lookout duty was becoming more miserable every day. Even the warmth of the sun heating up the array of solar panels on their perch couldn't keep out the chill anymore.

Still, freezing their asses off was probably a small price to pay for the comfort and safety of living under military protection at the school's Biological Laboratories building. It certainly beat any bleak alternatives that might've awaited them had they continued to try to escape Boston on their own.

When he first entertained the notion of escaping to New Hampshire with his dead partner's wife, he never imagined that Barbara Ellison and her eight-year old daughter, Katie, would have worse things to fear along the way than slow-walking zombies. The nightmare they encountered a few blocks from her home in Cambridgeport still scared him awake at nights. They were lucky Colonel Hayes showed up to save them when he did. From the sound of it, things were only getting worse out there.

Talk among the soldiers was that conditions were even on the decline at the survivor camp in Hanscom. Chatter over the radio said they were dealing with supply shortages, overpopulation, raiders, and a flu epidemic spreading like wildfire. Mike figured this was probably the same thing happening everywhere now. Civilization had come undone. What remained of it was tearing itself apart. Those who hadn't perished already were on the slow train to suffering, and it was only bound to get worse once winter set in and the power went out for good.

"Got a live one," Lloyd announced, picking up his glasses and training them north. "Corner of Hammond and Gorham. See her?"

Mike pulled out the sniper scope sticking out of his coat pocket and searched the street through its lens. Sure enough, he spotted a dead woman limping towards the four-way intersection on a leg that looked almost gnawed clean through to the bone.

He watched her stop every few feet to sniff the breeze for the scent of prey. They had nothing to fear from her keen sense of smell. Even if they weren't hundreds of feet away in a concealed position, the body spray Doctor Norah Mueller and her team concocted in the lab for Colonel Hayes and his men was supposed to mask their scent. She got the idea for it from Mike. An accidental coating of petroleum was the only thing that kept him safe during his walk to Barb's place. He couldn't say if the smelly chemical cocktail the scientist came up with was more or less effective than his bath in unleaded. He really wasn't keen to put it to the test, either.

"What do you think?" Lloyd asked, staring through his binos. "Office worker?"

Mike studied the torn, bloodied remnants of the dead woman's formerly tasteful outfit. Tailored jacket. Blouse. Dress pants. Sensible shoes, not heels. She seemed too business casual for most corporate offices. Her grey hair remained tied in a bun. A pair of cracked horn-rimmed glasses hung lopsided on her snarling face.