The Fall (Book 2): Dead Will Rise (4 page)

She said nothing. Loudly.

Kell grimaced as the RV trundled slowly down the highway. “You asked.”

After several minutes, Kate said, “I'd do the same.”

“What?”

“I'd sacrifice anything to get him back. It was unfair and stupid and hateful, what those men did. I don't blame you at all for the way the world is now, but if it came down to you or him, it wouldn't even be a question.”

Kell smiled. He couldn't help it. “I don't know if that means we're both normal, rational people who deeply miss our families, or if we're just crazy as shit.”

She laughed, weak but real. “Probably a little of both.”

Lunch was an event.

The group halted at the state line between Michigan and Ohio; this was where the escort from North Jackson was to leave them. The soldiers spent the first half of the day dipping in and out of the line, taking turns between scouting and guarding. A group of them waited at the state line, having gone far ahead of the convoy to clear obstructions.

It had always been the plan to stop while the guard refueled and readied themselves to leave their charges to the journey ahead, but the migrants not in Kell's group caught him pleasantly by surprise. While the soldiers checked their vehicles, topping off fuel and fluids with practiced efficiency, the group rushed to make lunch for everyone.

Kell's own people had planned to eat prepared meals, mostly granola and water. In a fight, he noted with amusement, the unit would be far beyond their counterparts, but when it came to whipping up a meal they had his own people beat by a wide margin.

“You know,” he said to Kate as they watched the meal coalesce before them, “that's pretty impressive.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You're kidding, right? They're just throwing together lunch.”

“No. They're putting together a meal large enough to feed our people, theirs, and the escort. And they're remarkably organized and efficient about it. They know where each item they need is located, how much of everything they'll need. No one is tripping over anyone else to get their job done. It's not combat, but they're actually pretty good at functioning in a crunch.”

Kate's face twisted into a doubtful smirk, but whatever she might have been about to say was cut off by a knock at her window.

A girl—a woman, really, but Kell figured eighteen was pushing it—stood waiting there, a covered plate in hand. Kate glanced at him suspiciously, but Kell's smile was restrained. She rolled the window down.

“Would you guys like some barbeque? I have a couple sandwiches here.”

The girl, who was pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way with mousy brown hair and dark blue eyes, might as well have been an angel, judging by Kate's reaction.

“Are you serious?” Kate asked. “How—you know, I don't even care how. Yes, please. It's been years.”

The girl handed the plate over with a sunny smile and darted off to join her companions. Kell let his grin show as he watched Kate tear the foil from the plate to reveal two heavy, steaming portions of heart attack waiting to happen.

Kell accepted his with grace, still smiling.

“Shut up,” Kate said.

“Blown tire!”

Kell heard the voice ahead bellow the bad news and held up a hand, signing a general halt. The migration slowed and stopped, which wasn’t a difficult task given the slow crawl the vehicles were forced into.

Many hours past lunch and far beyond the range the escort scouts had searched, the last ten miles were exactly the kind of nightmare the group was hoping to avoid. Blown-down trees, broken glass and debris from cars and spilled cargo. A minefield of sharp objects and obstacles capable of stopping them dead.

Now they were.

“Dan,” Kell said loudly as he moved toward the vehicle ahead, which tilted down slightly on one corner.

“I'm here,” the older man huffed as he jogged to Kell's side. “What's up, boss?”

The two of them stood a few feet away from the shredded tire as a small group of migrants stood nearby, shaking their heads and trying to figure out how to fix the problem.

“What's the problem, fellas?” Dan asked, stepping forward.

As the other man engaged the migrants, Kell got a good look at the damaged tire and understood the problem. There was a pit in the ground, a pothole with a piece of fabric jutting out over the lip. It was a trick Kell himself had fallen for, a covered trap filled with spikes to ruin a wheel. Except this entire stretch of road had been inspected for such things only days before.

This was new.

Kell spun, quickly striding back to the RV to speak with Laura, who was the current driver.

“That truck hit a marauder trap. Send Scotty ahead to check the road. They'll need to push that thing out of the hole before they can jack it up and replace that wheel. Have a team of three go forward and clear the road as fast as they can. Get everyone else inside vehicles.”

Kate jogged up, and Kell filled her in.

“Damn it,” she said. “Bad enough we've had to idle along and walk in front to watch for debris, now we have to wait for a repair, too? How did they miss the trap?”

Kell shook his head. “Easy mistake if you're looking for obvious, natural stuff. You don't think to look under every scrap of fabric when you're walking through an area as strewn with garbage as this.”

“But still,” Kate said. “We should say something--”

Laura cut her off. “It happened. We can't go back and change it. We'll warn them what to look out for, but you can't blame them for not knowing.”

Kate scowled, which she was good enough at it was almost a talent.

Laura only raised an eyebrow in return, stepping from the RV and slapping Kate on the shoulder. “Come on, grumpy. Let's take care of business.” She turned to Kell. “You're going into the RV. Sit in the lab, don't leave, and let us handle this. We may have to camp here. If so, you'll have plenty of time to work today.”

Kell tried a scowl of his own, but Laura pointed to the door of their vehicle with a look that bore zero bullshit. A foot and a half taller, a hundred pounds heavier, and armed to the teeth, Kell bowed his head and went inside.

“Good boy,” he heard Laura say as she locked the door behind him.

He wanted to bristle at being hidden away, but there wasn't any room for it in his head. Logic overruled emotion. By the time the tire was fixed, it would be his turn to drive anyway. There were dozens of people working to clear and secure the area. He wasn't needed out there. As he entered the heavily modified bedroom of the RV, with its books and equipment carefully strapped in place, he was reminded sharply that his value was best measured not in combat or leadership, but in this.

He was the best—and possibly only—person in the world equipped to handle the plague. Kate and Laura were still the only people who knew of his role in the outbreak, and the two of them knew any cure would almost certainly be his creation.

The sounds of the vehicles and people outside faded. Seeing the notebooks full of data he'd recalled and written down, mounds of information to be reviewed in an effort to strike the spark that would give him the answer, Kell began to relax.

Not the careless relaxation of someone without concerns. Kell felt his focus slide, mind reorienting, until it found the comfortable middle gear where his best work had always happened. Two years of thinking about the problem made it easy; his brain craved the academic challenge of trying to figure out a cure with nothing but his mental blackboard to work with.

For a long time he simply organized the facts. A timeline of Chimera, with every change and mutation he could recall added in. The overall picture was fascinating, from a detached point of view. Months after the outbreak, Chimera mutated to protect itself and its hosts from cold. Another variation also showed up well after the initial outbreak, which were the smart zombies he'd heard some people call Smarties. It was a stupid name, but at least accurate. It made him think of candy for some reason.

Long after that, the New Breed appeared. Smarter, stronger, faster, more coordinated, and with physical abnormalities making them more resistant to damage. The bone density loss—likely through malnourishment—wasn't present in the New Breed as it was in other zombies. The bands of thick, fibrous material beneath the skin in vital areas were invisible if you didn't know what to look for, but made attackers work to pierce them. Where survivors had been able to pierce the skulls of the undead with relative ease previously, thanks to weak bones and wasted skin, now they had to put tremendous effort into each strike.

In the weeks since learning about the New Breed, he'd worked the facts over in his mind. Based on the state of the smart zombies he'd seen, Chimera was either becoming geometrically more efficient at preserving the tissues it fed, or those smart zombies were fresher. Made much later after The Fall. The New Breed appeared much later still, though he'd been unaware of both until recently. The New Breed were as well preserved as the Smarties
.

The simplest and most likely explanation meant both variations reanimated from people who died recently.

It wasn't a flash of insight like many he'd had in the past, but more a final conclusion that his theory was the most likely explanation. A sense of certainty bordering on absolute.

Kell thought out the possibilities, then opened a small safe in the corner. Though he had to remove the contents blind, the space too small and cramped for him to do more than awkwardly crouch in, he was infinitely careful. Fingers graced the sides of cool glass tubes, vacuum-sealed plastic halfway down the sides. Deep-seated rubber corks, sealed as well as he could manage. All sitting in a padded rack with ties holding the tubes in place.

He sat back, prize in hand. Each of the tubes, filled only a few days before, held two things. The first was a small piece of venison, straight from the chopping block and bloody. The second, small biopsied sections of lung from the same person.

Ten samples of what everyone in North Jackson called The New Plague. Another name Kell rolled his eyes at, and again accurate despite its drama.

A knock from the bedroom door, followed by Laura, who stopped short when she saw what Kell was holding.

“Do you think it's a good idea to have that out?” she asked. “I got those samples because you asked, but I'd rather you not spill that shit in the RV while I still live here.”

“I won't.”

“Good, because that stuff is dangerous. We missed the worst of it living away from everyone, but it killed a lot of people before someone figured out how to treat it. Even now cases still pop up, or I wouldn't have been able to get those for you.”

Turning the tray of tubes over in his hands, Kell mused. “You told me the way this 'new plague' was finally treated was with very hot air, correct?”

Laura nodded.

Kell ran a finger along his bottom lip. “Seems pretty lucky, doesn't it? That hot air would stall this version of Chimera?”

She shrugged. “Not really. People have noticed almost since the beginning that zombies don't like temperature extremes.”

Leaning forward suddenly, eyes alight, Kell nodded. “Yes. The organism mutated to adjust for cold temperatures, but never managed to do so for heat. Convenient. In fact, I think it's a shade
too
lucky.”

Laura's brows knitted. “What do you mean?”

“I think this is engineered. A fail-safe inserted by the men who took my work before it was ready. I'm not sure how they did it, but I know they did. It's the only thing that fits. We tested Chimera in all sorts of environments, including pairing it with heat-resistant bacteria. It never had a problem in our trials.”

“How does that help us?” Laura asked.

Kell shook the rack of vials slightly, sloshing around the devoured protein inside. “This is the key. Think about it, Laura. It's a version of the plague that tries to overwrite other strains. We know it makes people sick, living people I mean, but do we have any idea what it does to the undead?”

She paused, considering. “No, I don't think I've heard anyone mention it.”

“I didn't think so. If it affects the dead, they'd probably remain in their hibernation state to fight the infection. We probably would've overlooked every clue. We need to test it.”

He removed three of the vials in a blink, yanking the ties holding them in the rack loose. Laura stepped forward, put a hand on his arm.

“Whoa, there. Hang on. Do you think it's a good idea to go opening those around here? Jesus, Kell, think about what you're doing.”

He hesitated, though there was no trace of contrition in his eyes. “You're right. We should wait until we're stopped for the night.”

Laura pinched the bridge of her nose. Kell could swear he heard her counting down from ten under her breath. “That's what I came in here to tell you. We're camping for the evening. We put it to a vote,” she said, talking over his squawks of protest. “Yours wouldn't have made a difference. The consensus is to hunker down here, let scouts clear the road ahead, and if this is a marauder trap, be ready for them. Better immobile and ready than to flee into unknown road conditions with enemies on our tails.”