Afternoon, Appachian Mountains, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

  Three mercenaries were fastening half a log to a barricade frame with steel cables, sweat pouring down their faces.

  “Hey, Leon, pass me a wrench!” Bearded Hank shook the wood chips off his hands and jerked his chin toward the abandoned road. “Last night Calista said the estate warehouse has enough compressed biscuits to feed us for four or five years. I thought I misheard.”

  Leon, crouched down securing the road stake, didn’t even look up.

  “More than that. This morning I was hauling sandbags and passed the abandoned bunker on the southeast side. I saw Calista with Leah, Rickson, and Ancheta doing inventory.”

  “At the very back there were crates of guns, bdes, and more magazines than I could count—stacked up like a hill. It’s basically an armory. I’m starting to wonder whether she’s the mercenary or we are.”

  Maya, wearing a camoufge bandana, straightened up and wiped her face with her sleeve.

  “Any heavy weapons inside? Machine guns, rocket unchers?”

  “Didn’t see any,” Leon said, “but Leah and Rickson took some people out today to restock.”

  “Probably just hunting gear the rich stored here for vacation trips,” Maya said. “Looks like they’re pnning to make a real stand here.”

  Leon nodded and pointed toward the cliff at the end of the road.

  “Yeah. I heard she and Ancheta are pnning to blow up that S-shaped bend in the road. Once that’s done, this pce will really become an isnd. The only way in or out will be that abandoned road.”

  Hank tightened the final bolt.

  “Hey, did you notice? The way Calista spoke at the meeting yesterday was completely different from when we first met her. She’s starting to sound like Pope.”

  Maya, a tough Mexican woman, tossed a roll of wire mesh onto the ground.

  “Who cares whether Calista’s taking charge? This pce belongs to the Norton family anyway. If it weren’t for her, we’d still be eating sand in North Africa. When the virus outbreak hits, nobody would escape.”

  She nudged a crate of canned food with her boot.

  “At least now, while the outside world’s in chaos, we’ve got hot meals, guns to maintain, a luxury estate to live in, and terrain perfect for defense. That’s not bad at all.”

  Hank lowered his voice.

  “I heard her talking with Ancheta st night about reinforcing the foundations. This morning she was counting ammunition in the armory. Feels like something big is coming.”

  Leon drove the st piece of rebar into the ground and dusted off his hands.

  “Who cares? As long as I can eat Mrs. Howard’s cooking every day and sleep in a bed without holes in it at night—”

  He grinned.

  “I’m happy to follow her. Even if the virus gets under control and everything goes back to normal, working as her bodyguards would still be pretty comfortable. Way better than our old lives.”

  ...

  After a full month of exhausting bor, the defensive works around Twilight Manor had been completely transformed.

  The viewing ptform where Calista’s family once stood to admire the scenery had been reinforced with welded steel supports. On top sat a circur watch post with firing ports, the entire structure draped in camoufge netting.

  A sentry stood inside with an assault rifle, his field of vision covering nearly three kilometers of dense forest surrounding the estate.

  The original stone wall around the estate, once barely strong enough to keep out stray cats and dogs, now stood on a reinforced concrete foundation. The inside of the wall had been strengthened with thick wooden stakes and steel ptes, and the top was lined with barbed wire that gleamed coldly in the sunset.

  Five meters outside the wall ran a trench two meters deep and three meters wide, circling the entire estate. The bottom of the trench was packed with sharpened hardwood stakes, lightly covered with loose soil for camoufge.

  Along the trench’s edge, rows of chevaux-de-frise obstacles stood crisscrossed, their iron spikes pointing in all directions. This was something Calista had specifically insisted on building.

  The mercenaries had also buried simple tripwire arms at the estate’s four corners and along the main paths. The wires were connected to copper bells mounted on the walls, so even the slightest disturbance would draw the sentries’ attention.

  Looking at the drastically changed estate, Calista finally felt a little more at ease.

  She had even considered fencing in the entire three-kilometer stretch of forest with barbed wire—just like the prison Rick and the others had fortified.

  One outer fence, one inner fence, with a buffer zone in between wide enough to stab walkers through the wire.

  But they didn’t have enough materials yet, so the pn had been shelved for now.

  “Calista, the reconnaissance team is back.”

  Bossie, his face painted with camoufge, knocked on the door of Calista’s office.

  “They pushed deeper into Knoxville today. The urban area about fifty kilometers to the northwest is completely empty. There were signs for Safe Zones all along the road.”

  “But when they followed the signs to one of the Safe Zones, it was total chaos inside. People were fighting over supplies. The military had already withdrawn, leaving most civilians behind. They said they had to defend more critical regions.”

  Calista ran her finger across several locations circled in red on the map and let out a cold ugh.

  “Government Safe Zones? They’re nothing more than giant pots concentrating chaos. Without order and enough armed forces, gathering more people together just creates mbs waiting to be sughtered.”

  “The more people there are, the faster the virus spreads.”

  Her voice wasn’t loud, but the nearby mercenaries cleaning their weapons heard every word.

  Some of them had previously thought Calista’s defensive construction was unnecessary paranoia. They believed the unrest would eventually pass, and they were unhappy that Leah and Rickson had indulged her demands.

  So Calista deliberately kept them nearby, allowing them to hear the reconnaissance reports firsthand.

  As the outside situation worsened each time the scouts returned—and especially after news came a week earlier that government Safe Zones had begun descending into chaos—no one questioned Calista’s almost obsessive mobilization orders anymore.

  “Bossie,” Calista stretched and began walking outside. “Anything unusual in the woods?”

  “Yesterday’s patrol didn’t find anything. We haven’t gone out today yet—Ancheta’s still finishing up some work. But we released Bullet and the others into the forest.”

  Twilight Manor kept a group of hunting dogs, which the mercenaries trained for guard duty and patrols. Bullet, a Belgian Malinois, was their leader.

  With nothing else to do, Calista took another walk around the estate. Looking at the fortress-like defenses, she thought to herself:

  This should finally be safe.

  But the peaceful days sted less than two days before trouble came knocking.

  Early that morning, Calista was awakened by noise outside.

  Rubbing her eyes, she stepped onto the terrace of the main building and looked down.

  Outside the reinforced iron gate of the estate, several filthy cars were parked crookedly.

  Seven people stood beside them—men and women, along with a half-grown child. Their faces were dusty, their eyes filled with exhaustion and fear.

  Leah and Rickson stood in front of the gate with several patrol members, forming a solid wall blocking the entrance.

  Leah’s expression was as cold as ever, but Calista noticed she had someone pass a small bucket of water to the group—especially to the woman holding the child.

  “What kind of trouble is this now?” Calista muttered.

  She grabbed a coat, threw it over her shoulders, and called Carver and Turner—two team members she was more familiar with.

  Then they headed downstairs to see what was going on.

  Hopefully the visitors weren’t bringing more trouble with them.