DAY ZERO

split

Old David looked up at the sky and did the mental calculation that old people do.

"It's almost lunch," he announced.

The collective groan was immediate and devastating.

"Grandpa—"

"They just got to the base—"

"You CANNOT stop now—"

"I'm hungry," he said simply. Which was true. Also convenient.

As if the universe had been listening — which in David's experience it occasionally did, usually at the worst possible moment — the back door slid open and Naza appeared with the particular energy of someone who had been cooking and was not interested in negotiating.

"Lunch," she said. Final. Absolute.

She set the pot down on the outdoor table and the smell hit immediately.

Spaghetti.

David closed his eyes for exactly one second. Naza's spaghetti was its own category of thing — something in the sauce, something in the way she let it sit just long enough, something that managed to taste like home. He'd never asked for the recipe. Some things you just receive gratefully.

The kids ate fast. Barely chewing. Eyes on David the whole time like they were afraid he'd dissolve if they looked away.

He ate slowly. Savored it.. Partly because he knew exactly what it was doing to them.

Amara pointed her fork at him. "You're doing this on purpose."

"Doing what?"

"Eating slowly."

"I'm eighty five."

"You're evil is what you are."

He took another unhurried bite.

Eventually — when the plates were mostly clear and the kids had run out of patience in a way that was almost audible — he set down his fork, settled back in his chair, and picked up the thread exactly where he'd left it.

The jeep was smooth. Too smooth, almost — the kind of ride that made you forget for thirty second intervals that everything outside the windows was wrong.

David drove. Kai sat behind him, quiet and still in that particular way of his, like a person who had made a separate peace with silence a long time ago. Tobey sat beside Kai and had been talking for approximately the entire forty minutes about something that had started as van maintenance and somehow evolved into a detailed theory about which pre-outbreak snack foods would have the longest survival shelf life.

Kai had not responded once.

Tobey didn't seem to require responses.

David's eyes went to the rearview mirror.

Lia was in the back corner. She'd been quiet since the park — not the comfortable quiet she sometimes had, the productive one where she was thinking through something useful. This was different. She was holding the stuffed bear in her lap and looking out the window and her jaw had that slight set to it that he recognised.

She was still seeing it. The clown. The way it had moved.

He looked back at the road.

Looked at the mirror again.

She was doing that thing where she held very still so that whatever was happening inside her wouldn't show on the outside and it almost worked except that David had spent enough time watching her face by now to know the difference between Lia being fine and Lia performing being fine.

He looked at the road.

In his peripheral vision Tobey, mid sentence about the structural integrity of vacuum sealed chips, went quiet for exactly three seconds. David glanced over.

Tobey was looking in the same mirror. Saw what David saw. Looked at David looking at the mirror.

He faced forward again and said absolutely nothing, which was so uncharacteristic it was practically an announcement.

A small private smile settled on his face and stayed there the rest of the drive.

The military branch appeared through the tree line like something that had been placed there deliberately to be intimidating.

Grey concrete. High fencing. Even abandoned it had a presence — solid and certain in a way that most things weren't anymore.

They pulled up and got out.

The air was different here. Quieter than quiet.

"My squad found this place two weeks ago," Kai said, looking at the building with the focused assessment of someone conducting an inventory. "We marked it for a supply run but—" He stopped. Brief. "Plans changed."

Tobey looked at him sideways. "You said there were two of you. What happened to your teammate?"

Kai was quiet for a moment.

"He got scratched," he said. "One of the blinkers caught his arm. Barely — just the surface." He looked at the fence, not at any of them. "We thought it wasn't enough. We thought maybe if it wasn't a full bite—" He paused. "His temperature started rising twenty minutes later. We were moving, trying to find somewhere to treat it." Another pause. "He was talking to me. Mid sentence. And then he wasn't."

Nobody spoke.

"Under twenty seconds," Kai said. "That's how fast it was." He was still looking at the fence. "I used his axe. I left his body there." He turned around. His face was completely composed. "That's what happened."

Tobey opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Swallowed.

"Enough," Kai said. Not unkind. Just final. "Let's move."

The door was a slab of reinforced military-grade steel with a panel beside it that had more security layers than anything Tobey had visibly encountered before. He stood in front of it with his device and tilted his head slightly the way he did when something interested him.

"This is tight," he said, almost approvingly. "Military firewalls. Backed up system. Someone didn't want this opened."

"Can you do it," Kai said.

Tobey looked at him.

"Can you?" he said. "Why are you even asking me that?"

He crouched in front of the panel and went to work.

The rest of them waited. David's eyes went to Lia again — she was scanning the perimeter, professional and alert, the bear nowhere in sight now, tucked somewhere safe in her bag. She felt him looking. Looked back.

Something passed between them. Nothing with words. Just the acknowledgment of two people who had been through a strange afternoon and come out of it still standing.

She looked away first.

He looked away second.

Three minutes later the panel beeped and the door exhaled — a deep pressurized sound — and swung inward.

Kai smiled. It was a small thing, barely there, but it was real. David was starting to understand that with Kai everything real was small and barely there and you had to watch for it.

He tapped the side of his watch and a three dimensional map materialized above his wrist — the facility rendered in blue light, rotating slowly, every room labelled.

"Weapons and ammunition here." He pointed. "Medication and medical supplies one floor up. Rations in the east wing. Vehicles in the underground bay." He looked at all of them. "There's a reasonable probability of blinkers inside. Personnel who were here when it started." He zoomed out on the map. "We split into two. Cover more ground, faster."

"I'll go with David," Lia said.

She said it quickly. Practical tone. Completely reasonable suggestion.

Tobey turned to look at her with an expression of pure delight.

"Isn't that a little—"

Her hand moved and she flicked him on the side of the head with enough precision that it was clearly not her first time doing exactly this to exactly this type of person.

"Mind your business Tobey," she said pleasantly.

Tobey pressed his lips together. Nodded seriously. "Minding it. Minding my business right now."

David looked at the map and thought, completely involuntarily: she's cute when she's angry.

Then he thought: bonus.

Then he thought: focus.

Kai had watched this entire exchange with stillness something that lived in a part of his memory he'd closed the door on because there wasn't room for it out here. He felt it move behind the door briefly.

He shut it again.

"Agreed," he said. "Lia goes with David — weapons and medication, you know what you're looking for. Take this." He unfolded a bag from his jacket. Large, reinforced. "Carry as much as you can." He looked at Tobey. "You're with me. Vehicle bay and rations."

"Obviously," Tobey said, still rubbing his head.

"We meet at the armour storag. Third level, north corridor." Kai pointed at the map. "In and out. Don't engage anything unless you have to. Move fast and move quiet."

He looked at all of them.

"Roger," David said.

"Roger," Lia echoed.

"Roger roger," Tobey said.

Everyone looked at him.

"Sorry. Yeah. Roger."

Kai closed the map. Checked his weapon. Looked at the open door and the dark beyond it.

"Move," he said.

And they went in.