The Coleman camp stove hissed softly in the background, blue flame licking the bottom of the De Buyer skillet as the Rancho Gordo cranberry beans simmered with a strip of salt pork and a heavy shake of Kinder’s The Blend.
Up on the ridge, the air stayed sharp and clear, carrying the faint, distant scent of wood smoke and pine. But down in the Knoxville basin, the world looked very different.
I sat on the tailgate of the 4Runner, a mug of coffee in one hand while I stared at the glowing rugged laptop connected directly to Grok’s server rack in the back. The screen was a nightmare of red telemetry and geospatial mapping.
Tom walked up, holding his unlit cigar, his eyes tracking the amber lines of data scrolling down the display. “What’s the butcher’s bill looking like down there, Jack?”
“Worse than the swamp,” I said, tapping the trackpad to zoom in on the Kingston Pike corridor. “Grok’s local processing loop just finished cross-referencing the pre-outage census data with the thermal drone sweeps we ran at dusk.”
Inside the cargo compartment, Grok’s external speaker clicked on, his precise voice cutting through the hum of the auxiliary battery. “Current statistical modeling indicates approximately ten thousand active infected units distributed throughout the primary Knoxville metro grid, Jack. In contrast, verified acoustic and visual sign intercepts confirm fewer than four hundred and fifty surviving humans hoarded in isolated pockets.”
Tom grunted, chewing on his cigar. “Twenty to one against us right out of the gate. And they aren’t shuffling around like blind extras in a bad movie anymore.”
“They’re pack hunting,” Raych said, walking over with a fresh pot of coffee to top off my mug. She leaned against the fender, her eyes fixed on the dark sprawl of the valley below. “We saw how they moved on the off-ramp. If we drop into the commercial district without a route mapped down to the second, we’re boxing ourselves in.”
“Which is why we aren’t guessing,” I said. I keyed the comms mic, calling Earl and Kaylah over from the Peterbilt where they were running a final post-trip check on the heavy rig’s fuel lines.
When the team had gathered around the tail of the 4Runner, I laid out the tactical reality.
“We need specific supplies,” I told them, keeping my voice low and steady. “Tom needs to replenish his heavy duck loads,Sarah needs to restock medical essentials and comfort items specifically for Mikey, Kaylah, and herself, and we’re entirely out of decent coffee that doesn’t taste like swamp water. More importantly, there’s a country club off Kingston Pike with an untouched cellar of top-shelf Michter’s rye and a pro shop annex that should still have vacuum-sealed single-origin Ethiopian beans.”
Earl crossed his massive arms, a slow grin touching his weathered face. “Now you’re speaking my language, Jack. But how do we thread the needle past a twenty-to-one horde down on the main drag?”
“Grok,” I nodded toward the server rack. “He’s going to map our approach vector using local drone overwatch. We move in before dawn when their nocturnal drifting slows down. The external security team—Raych, Earl, and Kaylah—will hold the perimeter with the Peterbilt and the F-150 to lock down the approaches. The raid team splits into two working elements: Tom and Mikey covering the annex, and Sarah and me hitting the cellar.”
Mikey, standing quietly beside his mother, perked up at his name, his hand resting on the stock of his firearm. “Do I get the bolt-action .410, Jack?”
I looked at the boy, remembering how steady he had held his ground on the last leg, and nodded once. “You’ve proven you can handle it, Mikey. You get the .410.”
A proud little grin broke across the boy’s face, though he kept his grip locked tight.
“You stick right with Tom on the annex sweep,” I added, meeting his eyes with absolute seriousness. “That’s a critical sector. You keep your eyes open and your safety on until we hit the vehicles.”
Tom clapped Mikey on the shoulder, giving a firm nod of approval. “He’s ready.”
I looked around the circle at the faces lit by the pale glow of the laptop screen—family, fighters, survivors who had refused to give up their humanity when the rest of the world went up in smoke.
“We prep the gear tonight,” I said, closing the laptop lid with a soft click. “First light, we roll down the ridge. We stay fast,we stay quiet, and we bring home the coffee.”