Page 5 of Zomromcom
Edie called the Containment Zone Emergency Line again.
No one answered. The line rang and rang.
While she waited for an attendant or even an automated message or voicemail option, her Neighbor Formerly Known as Chad wandered over to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator’s French doors, and peered at whatever was inside.
Closing the doors again, he strolled to his island—which was probably larger than many actual geographical islands—and bent over to rest his elbows on the marble countertop while he idly scrolled on his phone.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring .
According to the top of her screen, she still had coverage. Was the hotline simply overwhelmed by calls? Or was there something wrong with her phone in particular?
“Call the Zone hotline from your cell,” she told him. “See if someone answers.”
He didn’t even look up. “Nah.”
“What is the matter with you? All our neighbors—” Increasingly frantic, she strode over to the island and snatched his phone from his hand. “Fine. I’ll do it myself, jackass.”
He didn’t resist or try to take it away from her. Instead, he simply watched as she found the correct icon and tapped it.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring .
Next, she tried calling the all-purpose emergency number on both phones, then Kelvin’s number, and got the same endless ringing in response.
Bars or no bars, something had obviously gone wrong with the Containment Zone’s lone cell tower.
Was this a normal outage, born of neglect and the Zone’s crumbling infrastructure?
Or had the zombies somehow managed to compromise the tower?
They’d been created and trained to kill werewolves, not target communications systems, and according to Not-Chad, the creatures still couldn’t climb or use tools.
But a random outage occurring at the exact same time as a breach seemed very coincidental.
Didn’t matter right now. Those questions could wait until she found another way to sound the alarm and ensure her neighbors’ safety.
“I assume there’s internet coverage down here?” When he slanted her a look of scornful incredulity, she muttered, “Of course there is. It’s a modern amenity . I can’t make calls for some reason, but the Zone hotline must have a website where we can report a breach…”
When she tapped her screen to access the internet, though, she got an error message. The same thing happened on his phone.
Again, this wasn’t the first time the Zone’s infrastructure had failed her, and she’d already determined that the cell tower must be damaged or malfunctioning. But hadn’t Not-Chad been glancing through his messages even after the phone lines stopped working?
“Why the hells can’t I get online?” She thrust the cell back into his hands. “Fix this.”
With an expression of strained tolerance, he tapped a few times on his screen. Then frowned.
“The internet’s down,” he said slowly.
Her glare should have turned him to ash. “Yes. I know. Do something about it.”
“It’s never down. I installed my own system, specifically to prevent outages.” His brows drew together. “I was online just a minute ago. What the fuck?”
The overhead lights flickered and went out.
She froze, rendered silent by bewilderment and creeping dread.
They stood wordless in stygian darkness for several moments, until a faint buzzing sound heralded the return of his underground home’s electricity. Not every light illuminated, but enough to see all but the most shadowy corners of the space.
“That’s my generator,” he said, his frown deepening. “The power’s still out.”
“What…” She spread her hands. “What the hells is happening here?”
His mouth firmed in determination. “Let me check my security system.”
When he toed off his gore-stained shoes and washed his bloody hands at the kitchen sink, she did the same.
Afterward, as he about-faced and marched past the seating area, she trailed behind him.
A dim hallway ahead of them contained several doors, and he entered the first on the right.
His media room, evidently, complete with—
Was that a softbox in the corner? And a ring light on a sturdy-looking tripod?
What in the world did Not-Chad do down here? Was this a sheepskin-fetish OnlyFans thing? And if so, would an irresistible combination of prurience and sheer morbid curiosity force her to subscribe to his channel?
Another sleek sofa had been placed in front of a television with a very large screen, and a computer station occupied the wall behind the off-white couch. Without a word, he strode directly to the Mac and booted it up, then sat and clicked his mouse a few times.
His wide, curved monitor lit up with footage from around his property and within his house, both the 1960s section and their current, expansive shelter far underground. Also, on the bottom right of the screen, wasn’t that—
“You have no right to spy on my house!” She poked his shoulder, which had all the warmth and give of a stone statue. “What the hells, Not-Chad?”
When he didn’t respond, she poked him again.
Sounding sulky, he muttered, “During construction, I needed to track your comings and goings to ensure secrecy.”
“Construction is done. It’s been done for a long time now, I’m guessing.”
He shifted in his chair. “Criminals have claimed some abandoned buildings in the Zone. They’ve occasionally broken into occupied homes too.”
“That explains the security system protecting your house, but it doesn’t explain why you’re filming my yard and all four sides of my house,” she emphasized. “Especially when I haven’t given you permission and my life ostensibly means nothing to you.”
She raised her brows at him and waited.
After a long hesitation, he spoke slowly, still staring at his computer screen. “I intend to keep interlopers off my street, since I don’t want anyone snooping in my house. That requires monitoring my neighbors’ homes too.”
She squinted at the monitor. “I don’t see any houses other than ours, so—”
“Is this really the time, human? What happened to determining the cause of the outages so you can warn our neighbors?”
Okay, fair point. “Fine. But we’re discussing this later.”
He grunted and resumed zooming in on various images, then clicking to others.
“They haven’t been able to access my electrical or communications systems,” he said finally. “Whatever’s happening, it isn’t specific to this house.”
If that was true, who the hells had managed to disable the cell tower, internet service, and the power grid? Had the zombies done it? If so, had someone helped them?
That had been the cause of the First Breach, of course.
Back then, the thick stone walls ringing the compound had been considered entirely secure, and they’d remained unguarded and unsurveilled.
A small group of militants who’d underestimated the zombies’ menace after several years of safe containment had dynamited holes in Wall One and broken down the access door through Wall Two before being overrun by the very creatures they were attempting to free from captivity.
Those militants had all died horribly, along with virtually everyone living in Zone A, including her parents.
Before the human government and the Supernatural and Enhanced Ruling Council had taken joint action and sent sufficient troops to drive the zombies back into their compound, countless homeowners in Zone B had fallen too.
Only sheer luck had prevented further catastrophe.
If the militants had been able to set the charges for Walls Three and Four prior to meeting their grisly fates, the death toll would have been far worse.
Afterward, to prevent another such incident, the government-SERC alliance had begun conducting background checks on all current and potential Zone residents and limiting non-homeowner visitation inside the walls.
The alliance had also installed deep, wide moats outside Wall One and just within Walls Two, Three, and Four.
No bridge crossed the moat outside Wall One, since no one but zombies lived inside that stone barrier, and the government had long ago ceased their ill-fated attempts at either in-person surveillance or eradication.
The other moats had drawbridges that lowered after the scan of a valid pass and stayed down only until the permitted vehicle had traversed the bridge and exited through the temporarily open door in the wall.
Upon word of another breach, the drawbridges would stay up and the doors would remain shut, pass or no pass, allowing no exit for Containment Zone residents.
It was the price they paid for such incredibly cheap housing so close to the nation’s capital, in a formerly wealthy area of Northern Virginia.
The Containment Zone had become an exclusive gated community, albeit a crumbling one where very few people actually lived.
Once-thriving neighborhoods in Zones A and B had vanished in the space of three blood-smeared days, and they’d never returned.
Zone C rapidly emptied too, despite remaining untouched.
Humans and Supernaturals who could be killed by decapitation—shifters, vampires, trolls, and others—weren’t willing to risk proximity to the creatures after such a calamitous example of how seemingly foolproof defenses could fail.
Supernaturals who could survive zombie attacks—including demons, elves, and the fae—avoided the Zone as well, either because the area felt tainted by the massacre or because they wanted to live somewhere with better services and easier access.
Over the last twenty years, a mere handful of newcomers desperate for affordable housing—as well as criminals bearing forged documents, eager to take advantage of abandoned buildings and limited governmental oversight—had been permitted to join the few Zone residents too foolish, too stubborn, too poor, or too sentimental to leave.
How many of those descriptors applied to Edie, she couldn’t say.
Most of them, probably. Maybe all of them.