DAY ZERO

Tobey's pick

Eli raised his hand like he was in school.

Old David looked at him. "You don't have to raise your hand."

"What was happening with Grandpa Tobey and the other one?" Eli said immediately, hand still up.

"Kai," Amara said.

"Him yeah."

Old David opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

He scratched the side of his jaw thoughtfully. "Honestly? I don't know exactly."

Eli frowned. "You don't know?"

"I wasn't there." He shrugged simply. "I was with Lia. They were on the other side of the building." He paused. "But Tobey told me afterward. So I know most of it."

"Most of it?"

"Tobey's version of events was—" He thought about how to say this. "Tobey told stories the way Tobey did everything. With a lot of extra." A small smile. "So I'll tell you what happened. The real version. Not the one where he was apparently a lot taller and significantly more heroic."

The kids laughed.

And David went back.

Kai moved like a man who had been inside dangerous buildings before and had developed strong opinions about how to do it correctly. Fast, quiet, close to walls, eyes moving.

At the junction he stopped and looked at Tobey.

"Vehicles are down," he said, tapping his watch map. The blue light rendered the underground bay in miniature — rows of military transport, a ramp leading up to ground level. "Get down there. Find the best one you can. Bulletproof if possible. Size matters — we need to fit supplies." He zoomed in. "Bring it up the ramp and wait. I'll handle rations."

Tobey studied the map with the focused attention he reserved for things that genuinely interested him — tech, vehicles, anything with a lock he wasn't supposed to open.

He nodded. Memorized it. Handed the watch back.

"Simple," he said.

Kai looked at him with the expression of someone who had learned not to trust when things sounded simple.

"Be careful," he said.

"Always," Tobey said.

He was already moving.

The vehicle bay opened up below him at the bottom of a wide ramp, and Tobey stopped at the top of it and just — looked. For a moment he forgot about blinkers and rations and Kai waiting somewhere above him and just appreciated what he was seeing.

Rows of them. Military grade, heavy duty, the kind of vehicles that existed specifically for situations where regular vehicles would give up and go home. They sat in formation under emergency lighting that cast everything in a low amber glow.

Tobey walked the first row slowly. Professionally. The way a person walks when they know what they're looking at.

He stopped at a black armored transport. Solid. Wide. He ran his hand along the panel.

Bulletproof plating on the doors. Good.

He checked the interior dimensions.

Too small. Four of them plus supplies plus whatever they were about to pick up from the armory — they'd be sitting on top of each other. He shook his head and moved on.

Next row. He found a large military carrier — practically a truck, high clearance, serious size.

He pressed his hand to the side panel and knocked twice.

Regular. Not reinforced.

No bulletproofing meant no good out there. He kept moving.

Third option. A transport van, army green, good size, looked solid. He checked the panel seams. Checked the wheel condition.

He crouched down and looked underneath.

Something had happened to the undercarriage. Damage — old, pre-outbreak maybe, or early days. Either way the axle on the left rear side had a problem that nobody had gotten around to fixing because the world had ended before the maintenance schedule got there.

Tobey stood up. Looked at it for a moment with mild sympathy.

Then he turned around.

And there it was.

Military camo. Broad and low and solid in the way that things built to last a long time look solid. He walked toward it the way you walk toward something you've already decided on — just confirming what you already know.

He checked the plating. Proper reinforced panels, the real thing. He checked the size — five, six people comfortably, more if they stacked supplies right. He checked the tyres, the clearance, the undercarriage. He knocked on the doors and windows.

He nodded slowly to himself.

"You'll do," he said.

He pulled out his device and looked at the door panel. The security on it was layered — military encryption, which was a different animal from civilian locks. He connected his device and started reading the system.

He exhaled.

"Man," he muttered. "Should've brought the other kit."

He worked through it. The thing about military firewalls wasn't that they were impossible — nothing was impossible, that was practically Tobey's entire philosophy — it was that they were slow. Multiple authentication layers. Redundancies built into the redundancies. Whoever designed these systems had a very specific mistrust of people like Tobey that was frankly a little personal.

He sat cross legged on the concrete and worked.

The amber light hummed above him.

He worked through the first layer. The second. Hit a wall on the third that made him tilt his head and try something sideways, which worked, which always felt better than the direct route anyway.

The panel beeped.

Then beeped again.

Decryption complete, it said, in a voice that sounded vaguely apologetic. Access granted.

"There it is," Tobey said.

He stood up and opened the door.

And stopped.

There was a man in the driver's seat.

Tobey didn't move for a second. Just stood there with the door open and looked at him — a soldier, full uniform, head resting back against the seat in a way that looked almost peaceful. Almost like sleeping.

He reached in carefully and pressed two fingers to the man's neck.

Cold. Still. Long gone.

"Okay," Tobey said quietly. "Okay."

He looked around the bay. Back at the man. Thought about the timeline — how long had it been since it all started? Long enough for someone to find a car and lock themselves inside and decide that this was the better option.

He thought about what Kai had said.

Under twenty seconds.

He thought about what transformation looked like. What it felt like to watch it happen to someone you knew. He looked at the soldier and thought about what this man had known was coming if he didn't make this choice first.

"Yeah," he said. Soft and without judgment. "I get it."

He leaned in carefully, got his arms under the man's shoulders, and brought him out of the vehicle slowly. Walked him to the far side of the bay, away from the cars, against the wall. Laid him down properly. Straightened his uniform.

Stood over him for a moment.

Tobey wasn't a religious person, strictly speaking. He'd grown up on streets that didn't leave a lot of room for organized anything. But he'd also grown up knowing that some moments required something — some acknowledgment, some marking of the fact that a person had been here and was now gone and that mattered regardless of everything else.

He put his hand over his own chest.

"Rest well," he said. Simply. "You made your call. Can't judge that."

He stood there another second. Then he went back to the car.

He cleaned it out. Methodically. Checked the fuel — near full, military grade, good. Checked the engine remotely through the panel. Lights, systems, everything operational.

He got in. The seat adjusted automatically to his height, which was a nice touch.

He started the engine.

It was quiet. Powerful quiet — the kind you feel more than hear. He put it in gear and drove it slowly up the ramp toward the surface, the camo bodywork catching the light as he came up into the facility's ground level corridor.

He came out, parked it, and waited.

Drummed his fingers on the wheel.

Started thinking about snack food shelf life again.

The back door slid open.

Naza came out with a dish towel over her shoulder and began collecting the empty spaghetti bowls with the efficiency of someone who had raised children and therefore developed the ability to clear a table in under forty seconds.

She worked quietly. Plate by plate.

Old David watched her.

She picked up the last bowl and then — without sitting down, without making an announcement — she pulled a chair up to the edge of the group and sat on it. Dish towel still on her shoulder. Hands in her lap.

She looked at David.

He looked at her.

Something passed between them. Something that didn't need words and didn't use them.

The kids hadn't noticed. They were already looking at David, waiting, pulled back toward the story by that invisible current that good stories create.

David looked at all of them — the kids, and Naza at the edge of the circle, and the morning becoming afternoon around them all.

He settled back in his chair.

And continued.