The Fall (Book 2): Dead Will Rise (20 page)

They clinked bottles, sipping on a surprisingly not terrible brew.

“It's a little strange,” Kell said after a while.

“What's that?” Laura asked.

He nodded to the friends and acquaintances spread around them. The kids were starting to get rowdy, chasing each other in the dimming light. A few adults were deep into their cups, half-empty bottles of bourbon dangling from loose fingers. Drew was handing out sandwiches, apparently trying his luck with homemade barbecue. Two men arm-wrestled. A group of women cared for their weapons, idly gossiping as they ran whetstones over blades.

“How normal this is,” he said. “We could be on a camping trip, not a care in the world.”

Laura was quiet for a long time, watching.

“Know what I think?” she asked. Kell looked at her, curious. “I think when you get down to it, people want to be good to each other. I saw it in the service. People can be terrible, or just jerks, or selfish, or all three. But man, you watch long enough and you get to see some pretty amazing things. Someone walks up that hill toward us, all they see is a bunch of folks relaxing in front of their fires, having dinner and some drinks.”

She leaned into him, pointing. “I see two men who barely knew each other a few weeks ago telling stories about how they met their wives. Over there, a couple fellas who might have already been fighting are engaging in a friendly game. Here, women bonding over boring work,” she said, finally pointing at the children roughhousing by the main fire. “There you have instant best friends, inseparable, because they don't know any different. You ever notice that? Put kids together for any length of time, just to play, and they stick with each other.”

Her voice caught, and she fell silent.

“I've never heard you talk that way before,” he said lamely. “You're always so...”

“Cold?” she supplied.

“Businesslike,” he corrected. “The only observations you make are tactical.”

Laura shrugged. “Before, it's always been a fight. I lost my husband, was captured, then all that time trying to keep you safe, living away from people. I'm just happy we made it here. I think this place will be good for us.”

“I think you may be right.”

Laura sniffed and wiped an eye, and he pretended not to notice. “One of the guys I served with said something to me once, and I've never forgotten it. One of those offhand comments that burn into your brain so you can never forget. He said, 'Friends are people who laugh at the same things you do. Family are the ones who hurt with you.'”

She put an arm around his waist, hugging him tight. “You're leaving without me. Again. Don't get yourself hurt.”

“I won't,” he said, and meant it.

They watched the sun set together.

“One more time,” Will said.

With a sigh, Kell repeated their travel plan verbatim. When he was through, Chris, Kate, and Scotty did the whole thing over again as well.

“I'd still rather not take a shield,” Kell said. Will frowned, but Kell cut in before the man could work up a head of steam. “It's made out of a stop sign, Will. I know it works, but we're not nearly as good as your people and I look stupid carrying the thing around.”

“First of all, it's not 'your people', K.
You
are my people now, too. Second, I can't make you use the thing when you leave, but you aren't getting in that car without it. End of discussion.”

Chris and Scotty blanched in embarrassment as he was shot down, though Kate actually smiled and gave Will a friendly pat on the shoulder. “I like you,” she said.

Dawn was still fresh, the car was packed, and Kell was anxious to get on the road. The trio of scouts leading the trip would meet Kell and the others at the north gate. It was strange being back in armor, doubly because it wasn't a mixture of homemade pieces like his last set. New Haven had a dedicated shop for the stuff, and what Kell wore was designed from the ground up for the new world. Better still, it looked mostly like regular clothes, if a little bulky.

His spear was sharp again, if a little shorter. Patrick and his apprentices hadn't wasted time once they knew he was on a deadline. Their car sat open, a compact SUV whose cargo space held a huge extended gas tank. Kell secured the spear onto the rack on the roof using twists of wire given to him by Patrick, then threw his pack in with the rest of their supplies.

Will moved in close as Kell shut the hatch. “Talk to me for a minute,” he said, leading Kell a short distance away.

“What's up?”

Will took a deep breath. “Look, the scouts know where the research station is because I sent them there, but they didn't go in. Hell, didn't even get close. They haven't seen any paperwork linking you to the plague. They're in the dark.”

“Okay,” Kell said, not seeing his point.

“What I'm saying is that when you get there, the scouts will head south to gather information. They won't be going inside. Your friends, on the other hand, will. Do they know who you are?”

Shaking his head, Kell said, “No. Just Kate.”

“You might want to tell them. Better to hear it from you, you know?”

Kell shook his head again. “I don't know, man. I can't know how they'll react. It's...”

“Scary?” Will supplied. “They're putting their lives in your hands, and yours in theirs. From what I hear it won't be the first time for any of you. Trust is hard to come by nowadays, but don't you think your friends will care more about who you are rather than who you were?”

A question he was haunted by every day of his life.

Just inside the north gate, three women stood next to three motorcycles. The bikes bore the hallmarks of every long-range vehicle in New Haven; extended fuel tanks, racks for weapons, and additional armor. Unlike the SUV shared by Kell and the rest, the bikes only had armor on the front. Not enough to limit visibility, but sufficient to duck behind in a pinch.

All three women approached the SUV. Kell and Kate had already met them, but only briefly. They stayed in New Haven so little it was mostly luck he'd had even a short encounter. The tallest of the three, a statuesque brunette almost six feet tall, was clearly the leader. She motioned for Kate—the driver—to roll the windows down.

“Hi,” she said to the car, looking at each of them. “I'm Nicole Fraser. Until we get to where we're going, I'm the boss. This is Juel Vasil,” she said, pointing to a blonde with a pixie cut. “And that's Emilia Jacob,” she finished, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder at the third, a younger woman with olive skin and jet black hair wreathing her face in waves. “Either of them give you an order, you follow it. If we pull off the road, you do too. We should have clear roads at least into Indiana, hopefully until our first refill.”

Scotty raised a hand hesitantly. Nicole smiled. “I'm not your teacher. You have a question, just ask.”

“Uh, okay. But what if we don't? Have clear roads, I mean.”

Nicole squinted at him. “You're asking if we fight. Only if we have to. Our objective is to get you where you're going fast and safe. Juel is going to be your guidepost, okay? It's likely Emilia and I will have to split off from the group from time to time. Juel will stay with you. She knows the back roads and safe places just as well. If we get into a fight or get split up, just remember to follow the girl in the red helmet.”

Everyone in the car agreed, and Kate rolled the windows up. It was strange to be the follower, more so to be talked to like a rookie with no experience to speak of. It didn't bother him as much as disturb him. The scouts were confident and versed in the route they were about to take, yet they appeared tense, even worried.

The interstate toward Louisville could have existed in the old world except for the tall brown grass. The small communities of ten or fifteen people scattered through the area had cleaned the road bare of cars and debris. It was only when they approached the city itself that Kell began to understand how different this part of the country was. Cincinnati had been bad, packed with the undead and nearly impassable in areas. Louisville was magnitudes worse.

The interstate hugged the river, carrying them over the destruction. The damage was breathtaking, impossible to look away from. Where Cincinnati was overgrown, areas burned until buildings were husks, Louisville looked like a war zone in the truest sense. Tall buildings bore the unmistakable signs of explosions, great scoops of glass, metal, and stone missing from their facades. One of the taller structures was collapsed, thousands of panes of glass shattered in a glittering halo around countless tons of concrete and twisted I-beams.

Zombies swarmed on the streets below, teeming masses following the surface roads. Further back they'd passed barriers, piles of cars and fallen trees keeping the majority of the undead from reaching the highway. Part of their briefing for the trip involved an overview of migration patterns. This was as late as they could possibly leave; the season for swarms was beginning. Louisville was the gateway many roving zombies used to reach New Haven, attracted by the constant activity as traders moved through. The smell of exhaust and human beings left a trail leading right to their doorstep.

Kell tried to estimate the effort it had taken to clear these roads and build the barriers. The sheer number of dead wandering below was mind-boggling, and those were just what he could see from the back seat of the SUV.

Around a bend in the road, they saw the remains of a military blockade. It spread across what looked like a park, the tattered remains of green tents flapping in the breeze. Most of it had been picked clean by survivors, but while there were no vehicles or other hardware, the collapsible roadblocks and barriers made its size obvious. There must have been artillery at some point.

A dark part of him hoped whoever used it on the city hadn't lived to brag about it.

Long hours passed. They had to take a less direct route, continuing through Kentucky rather than cutting through Indiana in Louisville. The bridges were already packed with zombies this time of year, requiring them to travel on to Henderson before cutting north. It was all part of the carefully designed itinerary, which Kell had agreed to easily. This wasn't his neck of the woods, after all.

But the
boredom
.

He expected to stop sometime in the afternoon. Tough or not, the women riding in front of them had to eat. They didn't, everyone in the SUV eating on the go. Further along the northern boundary of the state, down less frequented roads, the way grew more cluttered. Here there were no people working to clear the way. At times their speed slowed to a crawl, and once they had to stop to push several vehicles off the road in order to move forward.

It was evening before they finally came to a halt longer than a few minutes. Nicole veered onto an exit ramp, the rest following. A mile from the highway, tucked behind a service station, sat a disguised set of barrels full of fresh gasoline. It was good—their extended tank was dry, drained into the main tank and even that mostly gone. Doing some math, he guessed they would need at least another of these refuel stops before hitting their goal.

Iowa. A stone's throw in practical terms, only seven hundred miles. Not even five percent of the planet's circumference. The distance was unimportant. The dread slowly adding to itself in his gut, layer upon layer, wasn't fear of what they'd face in their travels. It was knowing that, short of death, he would have to confront the old life he'd spent the last two years trying to forget, to face the responsibilities he'd abandoned when Karen and Jennifer died.

For all that the trip was meant to give him the tools to begin fixing the mess the human race found itself in, it felt like a death march. Kell was John Coffee walking the Green Mile. Only he didn't have Coffee's easy grasp on his own innocence. No matter what Andrea or anyone else said, the plague truly was on him to some degree. Every mile brought him closer to the moment when he would have to stare that monster in the face.

Nicole, Juel, and Emilia topped off their tanks as Kate did the same. Each of the scouts snacked as they waited to fill up, chasing their scant meals down with several pills. Kate motioned for Juel to come over, the women standing together just behind Kell's open window.

“Are we camping here, or do we need to pull a little further from the road?” Kate asked.

Juel blinked. “Camp? No, we're not stopping yet.”

“We've been on the road all day,” Kell said, poking his head out the window. “We can switch drivers, but you three—”

“Are used to going for fourteen to sixteen hours in an emergency,” Juel said. “And guess what? It's
always
an emergency. We'll stop in northern Missouri. There's a nice spot we've been working on for the last few months, a campground the scouts and traders can use as a safe haven. We'll sleep there.”

Kell was about to protest when Kate leaned down. “You want to drive for a while? My ass is cramped, I don't think I can manage another minute.”

“I'll do it,” Chris said. “I napped for like five hours.”

“We didn't notice,” Scotty said.

“Really?” Chris asked.

Scotty rolled his eyes. “No, not really. You snore like an old chainsaw.”

In only a handful of minutes they were on the road again, lights cutting through the unnaturally dark night—which when you think about it is wrong, it's the only truly natural darkness in centuries—and trundling quietly across the pavement once again. Kate had reset the trip odometer before they'd left, and after a full day of driving they were barely halfway. As much as he wasn't looking forward to seeing the fallback research facility he'd avoided—by murdering the agent who ordered him to go—he was also glad to be moving. Human beings were hardwired for nervousness and tension when traveling new ground. Survival demanded it.

Unfortunately, they only made it five miles before having to stop again.

Cresting a hill, their headlights scattered over the bodies of dozens of people. The nearest was only a few yards away, and it was fresh. No signs of rot, at least. In the wash of light, nearly as many zombies could be seen crouching down, some on hands and knees, tearing chunks of flesh away. Some looked up at the newcomers while others remained as they were, heads buried in their victims, gnashing with abandon.

“Son of a bitch,” Chris whispered.

Juel and Emilia dismounted their bikes almost in unison, drawing heavy machetes and pulling their helmets off. Even before Nicole waved for them to join the fight, Kell was unbuckling his seat belt and pulling the door handle. His first instinct was to reach for the spear, but Scotty thrust one of the heavy, custom machetes at him—manufactured in North Jackson, funnily enough—along with one of the octagonal shields. The ground was too littered with corpses to allow for much in the way of coordination, but their movement would be limited to the reach of the headlights.

The dead seemed reluctant to leave their meals, mostly ignoring the living people staring down the hill at them.

“Nicole, they don't look like they want to come after us,” Kell said. “Why not just drop some ammonia and drive through? You said we don't want to fight.”

Pulling her own helmet off, Nicole shook her head. “No way around. This road leads to a bridge, the only one in a hundred miles that takes us over the creek. And it's a big creek. Someone took out all the other bridges.” She pointed her blade past the feasting ghouls. “This many dead, there's probably a vehicle we can't see. Might be across the road, might not, but these bodies came from somewhere. Do you want to drive through without fighting only to hit a roadblock and have all these zombies trapping us there?”

Kell shook his head.

“Glad you agree,” Nicole said. “Maybe next time you'll take me at my word without the walk through, yeah?”

“Uh, sure. Sorry.”

Nicole nodded. “Let's do it, then. Three units. Me, Juel, and Emilia in front. K and Scotty to our right, Kate and Chris to the left. Stay close enough to keep stragglers from our backs, far enough you don't hit us with your swings. Remember, keep the shield up and swing down if you can. Otherwise use your own judgment.”