Reece received a few pats on the back as everyone broke up to carry out their assignments. He and Angel headed to the garage to collect the Glowbug and Helios. Ciera slid into the driver’s seat of a transport truck, while Talia hopped onto another solar cycle. Bjorn crawled into the cab of another transport and Jorgen took the trike. Karina and Naeva took a transport each.

Angel had several other transports join them. Within five minutes of Reece finishing his little speech, they all had taken off down the road. Reece sat on the Helios alone and wore a new backpack with the nightcore stored safely inside. The journal and the hard drives had gone with one of the captains on one of the faster boats. The plan had been put into motion. Now it all depended on their execution of it and a bit of good luck.

Three large grey transport trucks led a convoy as it barreled down I-95 straight towards the oncoming army of undead still dozens of kilometers away. Following the sturdy trucks with tan canvas covering their beds were a red fusion trike and a Helios solar cycle.

At the same time, a second convoy was traveling in parallel with them along Highway 17. Another five transports, the second solar cycle...a Flyspark, and the Glowbug made up this convoy. The second convoy was traveling significantly faster than the convoy that had taken I-95, despite that convoy having a better road to travel along.

They lost sight of each other after a few minutes but continued along their route. Reece was with the first convoy as it set a leisurely pace down the wide highway. It had already been scouted and they knew where all the abandoned vehicles were, none of which posed a problem for the convoy.

A little over a half-hour into the drive, Reece began to smell something foul as the wind began blowing in a northerly direction. Thankfully, the smell of rotten meat started very weakly before steadily growing stronger, the closer they were getting to the rotting horde of undead.

Another ten minutes and they crested a hill and saw the army sprawled out before them in all its grotesque glory. Most of it had crossed over the highway, but the zombies in the back quickly noticed the oncoming convoy and turned to block and swarm it. Still, the convoy came on, speeding up as it roared down the highway towards the wall of undead flesh closing in on them as zombies scrambled up the sides of the interstate’s steep sides.

Suddenly, the front transport swerved to the left as it started smashing through dozens of zombies. It went off the road and started tipping over. Reece was the only one to notice the small figure dart out the back of the truck as it crashed and began sliding to a stop in the middle of thousands of zombies.

Reece pulled his cycle up next to the second transport which was rapidly approaching the zombie horde. The cab door swung open and Naeva nimbly hopped from the speeding vehicle and onto the back of Reece’s cycle. As soon as she landed Reece slowed down and spun the bike around heading back in the direction they had come.

Karina came running up beside him from where she had leaped from the first transport. She had a radio control in her hand and Naeva pulled an identical one out as she rode on the back of the Helios. Reece could hear the second transport crashing off the right side of the road as the third transport passed him with the solar buggy riding right beside it.

He looked back just in time to see Ciera leap from the speeding truck and land in the back of the buggy driven by Jorgen. As soon as she hit, he began slowing the Glowbug down and a huge explosion erupted from the first transport as Karina pressed the button on her remote control, activating the bomb that Angel had engineered from parts and materials he had recovered from the Cape. Jorgen’s buggy was well on its way to catching up to Reece, Naeva, and Karina as the blast wave hit and nearly knocked them all down.

Luckily, Reece kept the cycle upright as they continued to speed away. A few seconds later, Naeva pressed her button as well and a second explosion rocked the horizon, blowing zombies hundreds of meters through the air to land in pieces in a five-hundred-meter radius.

Reece looked over his shoulder to see the blast wave coming as the third transport truck penetrated the enemy’s lines by over a hundred meters before Ciera hit the button on a radio control she had also pulled out. Reece looked back to the front before the boom of the explosion resounded across the countryside. With the damage done, they headed back to the nearest off-ramp and made their way to Highway 17 to meet up with the second convoy.

Timing would have to be nearly perfect for the plan to work, but Reece was thinking that it seemed to be working so far. He estimated that they probably took out several hundred of the Z’s. He hoped that would be enough.

Karina hopped into the buggy to conserve her strength as the two small vehicles zoomed down the highway at top speed. The buggy wasn’t quite as fast as the bike, but they still managed to maintain over one-hundred and fifty kilometers per hour.

No one talked, their minds filled with anxiety and their nerves were electric. They all knew the main part of the horde was quickly closing in on the slower moving convoy ahead of them and they needed to reach that convoy before the horde did at all costs.

For ten long minutes, the landscape flew by as they closed the distance between them and the second convoy. The smell of the sea mixed with the smell of undead as the horde crested a hill less than a kilometer from the highway. They reached the rear transport and quickly passed it up. Reece glanced into the cab as he rode by, noting that no one was driving the vehicle.

They passed the fourth, third, and then second transport before the horde reached the road and swarmed the slowly moving vehicle. Reece and Jorgen both hugged the left side of the highway as the horde crossed from the right. They passed the lead vehicle which provided some cover from the oncoming horde of zombies encroaching on their path along the highway.

All at once, several zombies burst forth in front of the lead transport, blocking their path. Reece’s heart dropped for a split second before the rapid-fire rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire came from the buggy just in front of him. Ciera was standing in the buggy while Karina held her leg, keeping her from flying out when Jorgen was forced to swerve around the quickly dying monsters. She had a large belt-fed gun in her hands and was busy mowing down the zombies as fast as they set foot on the highway.

Three seconds later, they were through the gauntlet of undead flesh and the welcome sight of small vehicles parked at the top of the next rise greeted them. When they got to them, Reece watched as Angel, Bjorn, and Talia used radio controls to drive the last three transports along the road as the horde swarmed over them. The first two transports were already overturned and covered with zombies. From the distance, it reminded Reece of an anthill after it had been kicked. Small figures crawled all over everything.

Before the Z’s bosses could figure out what was happening, individuals in the small group began activating their radio-activated bombs. Three seconds and the first truck exploded, sending dozens of zombies flying. The remaining bombs went off one by one. Fifteen seconds later, the last of the five bombs detonated, taking many dozens of the undead with it.

The ruse had been a success, and Reece hoped it would be enough to grant them victory when they made their stand. With the damage assessment of the enemy completed, the small group mounted their vehicles, and the trike, solar cycles, and buggy all headed south for Cape Canaveral, a base that had very limited access and would create a bottleneck for any large force to squeeze through. Reece was hoping to use that to their advantage as they continued speeding down the highway toward their destination.

The kilometers ticked by as Reece and his companions sped towards the Cape as quickly as they could. Reece hoped the horde of undead hadn’t destroyed the installation as it was near Kennedy and the horde of zombies numbered in the thousands. He felt Naeva’s grip tighten around his waist as he swerved back and forth, avoiding several abandoned cars and trucks on the highway.

He smiled at the thought of the three women in his life, but he still had to figure out each relationship and what each of them wanted from it. Of the three, Naeva seemed to be the free spirit and seemed to prefer to go with the flow of things and not become too attached. But that didn’t make her immune to his and her connection, whatever she currently thought of it.

When she wanted to keep him at arm’s length, he had decided to try and do the same with her. But feelings and logic don’t always mix well, and he wasn’t sure where they stood with each other anymore.

And then he had Karina too, who had turned out to be a true and stalwart companion. She had lived dozens of lifetimes and maybe had a good answer to his dilemma. She didn’t seem jealous of the other two, and neither did Naeva for that matter, but Reece knew women were good at keeping their true feelings locked away from prying eyes.

And then Ciera entered the picture. It didn’t matter how sweet or beautiful she was, he never would have started anything with her if not for her survival depending upon it. With two women, it was complicated at best, with three...it was a hot mess of emotions and logic traps...again, at best. He knew he loved all three of them, each in their own way.

It all felt right, but also very wrong. It wasn’t his conservative upbringing this time. He had pretty much broken the shackles of the traditional morality that society at large had instilled in him. He just couldn’t square how unfair it was for all the women to be in love with one man. Could any of them be truly happy in such an arrangement?

Reece just didn’t have the answer to that question. He also wasn’t sure any of his lovers would give it to him if only to spare his feelings. He felt the need to have a deep talk with each of them when he had a chance. For now, however, he just needed to ride...and fast.

After a couple more hours of watching the landscape and seascape zoom by and they reached the Cape. Reece was relieved to see that it was still in one piece. It didn’t look like the horde had even traveled to the base, which seemed odd to Reece. If it had been him that went to Kennedy and found it abandoned, he would have at least checked the Cape in case the community had retreated there. He considered that they may have sent scouts and that put his mind partly to rest.

Unfortunately, another thought was nagging at him. He hadn’t seen the winged creatures with the main force, nor anywhere else for that matter. Not since the first time he and Karina had spotted the horde.

The two solar cycles, trike, and buggy all pulled into the large parking lot on the north side of the Cape. There was still no sign of the watercraft, but Reece didn’t expect them just yet. He just hoped they would make it before the oncoming horde, or his little band of ne’er-do-wells would meet a grizzly fate.

Angel led them to the makeshift armory they had hidden there. It was an older medium-sized building, used for storing maintenance equipment when it had been used as a space base for the U.S. Spaceforce.

He kneeled in front of the roll-up door and grabbed a small rusty-looking lock. Spinning the digits on the combo-lock, he popped it open and removed it before grabbing the door’s handle and lifting it up. Despite its decrepit-seeming state, the door rolled open smoothly and quietly. Lights flashed on as soon as they stepped inside and noticed a lot of junk machinery lying about.

“Reece, give me a hand with this, would you, bud?” asked Angel as he grabbed one end of a large metal table sitting over a pile of small motors resting on a large army green canvas tarp.

Reece grabbed the other end and the two of them lifted the heavy table and carried it to the side. Angel had him grab part of the tarp and the two of the pulled it to the side, exposing a large wooden trap door in the cement floor. Angel pulled on a rusty chain connected to a ring on one end of the door and flung it open. A stairway led down to another storage room that lit up as they walked down the stairs.

Inside the room, all manner of weapons lined both long walls of the room and rested on a narrow metal table down the center. A few metal chairs sat around the table, but otherwise, the hidden room was bare. The secret underground space was about three meters wide and ten meters long.

Reece took in the view of the gear assembled there with newfound relief. Angel had amassed an impressive cache of weaponry, ammunition, and combat gear. The residents of New Hope would need to make full use of all of it.

The small group quickly spread out and began gearing up with everything they could reasonably carry and remain combat effective. They also carried up numerous guns and ammo for the folks on the soon to arrive armada of ships and sailboats. They were doing everything within their power to be prepared for the impending assault.