The Fall (Book 2): Dead Will Rise (5 page)

Mulling it over, he eventually agreed. “You're right. Plus it will give me time to scrounge up a zombie and test a theory.”

Laura shook her head, wisps of red hair drifting from her ponytail. “I think you should wait until we get to Kentucky, Kell. It's way too risky out here. Besides, you wouldn't have the time you'd want to observe and record.” She pointed to the vials still resting in his hand. “Why don't you tie those back up, stick that thing in the safe, and try to work out ways to cure
people
instead of just thinking of ways to kill the undead.”

He smiled at her, a thin and fluttery thing, coming back to ground level as his excitement faded. “Of course. You're right.”

Laura grinned at him. “I usually am.”

She set the lock before she left, the door closing with a heavy click behind her. Kell sat staring for long minutes, mind working out the possibilities, the endless permutations of all the available data.

The rack went back into the safe, locked in tight and secure from casual harm.

Wrapped thickly in fabric and bundled together, the three vials went in the pouch on his belt.

The sky gaped wide above him, stars shining bright. At three in the morning, Kell barely noticed them. There were no fires, no sources of light to make it easier to spot them by anyone who might be watching. On his stomach, on top of the RV, he watched for trouble.

His turn on watch duty would be over at dawn, when the rest of the camp rose and readied to travel. When Kate woke him for his shift, he'd worried the other migrants would be careless, forcing him and the other three people in his group to spread out and watch the entire camp themselves.

Faint guilt flushed his cheeks as he scanned the starlit hills. He needn't have worried; the migrants posted twice the guards his own group used, operating in pairs and disciplined enough to meet even Laura's strict requirements.

Every guard wore their armor, and while Kell's own people were covered in the bits and pieces of gear acquired or constructed over time to create full body armor, the rest of the migrants used more streamlined material. Heavy cloth layers sewn together with dense stitching around the seams. A few of them wore Kevlar over their cloth armor, and he suspected the rest wore theirs below. Overall, the stuff would work well against the undead, if not so much when dealing with knives or bullets except for low-velocity rounds.

Still, it was more foresight and preparedness than most of his group expected. Which, when he thought about it, was stupid and dismissive. These people had survived The Fall, too. Seen and dealt with situations more severe than anyone could have dreamed a few years before. Kell thought them weak and lazy given their time in the relative safety of North Jackson's walls.

The weapons in their hands reflected glints of moonlight from wicked edges and points. Whatever else these people might be, they were not easy prey.

Kell shifted his weight, careful to avoid putting any pressure on his belt pouch. Kate called it paranoia to live in his armor the way he did, always ready to flee at a moment's notice. His pouch, loosened slightly to allow him to lay flat, carried not only the vials containing samples of the New Plague, but also homemade ammonia grenades, sealed blood bait, and an assortment of other things he'd rather not crush. The ladies chided him for carrying an arsenal at all times, and for wearing his backpack everywhere he went.

The rest of the unit had begun to do the same. Once they reached Kentucky, safe in their new home, they would all relax that discipline. During the trip, Kell didn't want to be caught weaponless for even a second.

The long hours crept by slowly, the world turning beneath them as the stars gave way to the first gray tones of dawn. Below, Kell watched the other guards move from their posts to wake the rest of the group. He kept watch for a while longer, ignoring the shuffle of tired feet and the yawns of people whose routines still demanded coffee after all this time.

Come to that, his own body wanted caffeine something fierce, but he ignored the desire.

Kell slid to the RV's ladder, climbed down quickly and looked for Scott and Dan to give them report. He spotted the pair with the other group, grinning as they took bowls of food—dried fruit and granola, by the look of it—from the same young woman who'd given Kell his sandwich the day before. Eager to give report and spend an hour or two relaxing in the passenger seat of the RV, Kell grabbed his spear from beside the ladder and strode forward.

Halfway to the group, the sun poked out over the hills to send bright rays of light at the gathering of survivors.

That was when the gunfire started.

The shots were grouped close, three single cracking reports and then silence. No one screamed; the only noises Kell heard from the convoy, as he threw himself back behind the RV, were the shouts telling people to get down, stay down, and wait for orders.

The standing procedure was for anyone inside a vehicle to stay there. As he stood on the RV's passenger side waiting for the next round of bullets to score a victim, a tapping sound caught his attention.

Kate's face peered at him through the window, worried. “Laura is on the other side,” she said, voice muffled through the thick Plexiglas they'd installed. “She can't spot the shooters. The woods on the other side are too dense to see much of anything.”

Kell nodded, but before he could reply a faint smell caught his attention.

“Fuck me,” he breathed, then raised his voice. “Ammonia! They're pushing a swarm toward us!”

His statement was confirmed a moment later when Laura's loud cursing penetrated the wall of the RV. “Swarm just came from the trees!”

Pulse pounding, he struggled to assess the situation. Whoever was firing at them didn't want to damage anything, that much was obvious. If the goal were to kill the group at any cost, they would've fired from hiding instead of risking the use of a zombie swarm as a weapon. For now, at least, the enemy used gunfire to keep his people from moving around and forming up, waiting for the zombies to do their work.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Kell muttered.

“We're coming out,” Kate shouted through the window. “Laura and I can fire from under the truck--”

“No!” Kell said, frustrated. “You come out, they'll start shooting again.”

“So what do we do?” Kate asked angrily.

“I don't know, give me a second.”

The shuffling crunch of bodies moving through brush reached his ears, too loud for his comfort. The swarm had approached while he argued. Now that he paid attention to it, he could hear Scotty shouting a request for orders.

Kell's mind raced. Of all the people not in vehicles, he was the lone one of them not massed in the group thirty feet away. An idea formed, and the swarm gave him no time to second-guess it.

“Scotty! Dan! Anyone with guns over there start shooting carefully. Just slow them down for a few seconds.”

Kate stared at him through the window. “Kell, what--”

Their eyes locked. “You'll know when to start shooting,” he said. “You and Laura pull the windows out and lay down suppressing fire. You have about twenty seconds.”

He turned from her before she could argue, more loud cursing coming through the RV walls. Kell's fingers fumbled in his belt pouch for a moment until they found what he was looking for. The first shots rang out from Dan and Scotty's group, and Kell took three huge steps back from the western side of the RV.

With careful aim, he threw the ammonia ball, a thin glass globe encased in candle wax, at the trapped group of survivors. The smell would be enough to hold off the undead for at least a few seconds, though Kell doubted an easy meal would be ignored for long, no matter the discomfort.

The shots came from the west, which means I should be safe...

Kell rubbed his second weapon down his chest, then lobbed it at the closest zombie as he backed down the eastern side of the road. The small hill leading down from the highway, plus the height of the RV, should have offered him enough cover to avoid the shooters.

The blood-soaked sponge his people used as bait smacked into the face of a ghoul already backing away from the fresh bout of ammonia. The thing had the thickened gray skin and intelligent eyes of the New Breed.

Still backing away toward the woods, Kell screamed.

“Now!”

Gunfire erupted from the far side of the huge truck, and just as Kell lost sight of the group as he staggered backward down the incline, he saw them move. Hopefully toward the doors of their vehicles. The small swarm of zombies did not fall from his sight, however; they were moving toward him at a brisk pace.

Turning to run along the edge of the woods at the base of the hill, Kell stopped. He hadn't paid attention to the area ahead, which was impassably choked with cars pushed off the main road. By the time his mind processed that information, the swarm was nearly on him. He spun to fight only to realize hands were both free.

In his haste to throw his other weapons, he'd dropped the spear next to the RV.

The dead moved with all-too-graceful steps, faster and more deadly than the rest of their kind. Maybe smart enough to get his armor free, should he falter, and win the tasty person within it.

Whatever Laura and Kate thought of his motives, in that moment he knew one of their chief concerns was wrong.

Kell wanted to live.

After the briefest hesitation, he turned on his heel and dashed into the woods as fast as his feet could carry him. In the greater scheme of things it wasn't all that fast; his boots were tough but inflexible, making each bounding step a labor in itself. At least the ground at the edge of the woods was clear, making the way forward easy enough to traverse.

Behind him, the roar of engines filled the road, only audible between bursts of gunfire. Thankfully, this very situation had come up in their discussions about the migration. Should one of them become separated from the group, the person should expect the group to stop ten miles south of where they lost him.

Kell repeated that standing order in his head as his feet pounded twigs to dust. A brief glance over his shoulder showed only trees; the foliage was too dense for him to even see the road. That quick look also brought some relief, as the zombies behind him were losing ground. The gap between them had been less than five feet when he took off at the closest approximation of a sprint his footwear would allow. Now it was almost twice that.

Granted, he'd run at least a hundred yards, but still. Progress. He tried to ignore the stitch creeping up his right side and focus on the positives.

With a grim calculus, Kell debated whether he should toss another ammonia grenade. He was tired, hungry, and while years of effort built tremendous stamina and toughness, he was wearing nearly every piece of survival equipment he owned. The effort of running with it all was already setting his muscles on fire.

Reluctantly, he pulled another sphere from his pouch, waiting to drop it until the perfect moment. He had no idea when that might be, of course, since this area of highway was virtually unknown to him. He could be heading for the nearest stretch of road, or for all he knew dashing madly toward the deepest part of the forest. The only thing he knew for certain was that the trees were growing thicker, and the land had begun to slope downhill, ever steeper.

Someone blessed with less attention to detail might have missed the sharp twist in the foliage ahead, but Kell caught it in time—barely. The sound of running water caressed him between the basso drumbeats of his falling boots. Another backward glance showed a distance of about fifteen feet between his pursuers and their meal. Enough time to spare a second to decide a course of action. But only a second.

He hit the edge of the embankment. In a flash, he observed and weighed the data before him. It wasn't a river, but as creeks went you could fairly count on steering a large boat down its waters. The bank he stood on was an overhang, the tumbling creek nearly twenty feet below. It was wide and appeared deep. And as far as he knew, zombies couldn't swim.

Kell threw the waxed glass ball over his shoulder as he bent at the knees and launched himself out into the air.

The choice had been a terrible one, no matter how he looked at it. Jump in the creek or climb a tree and hope the New Breed hadn't learned that skill. Swimming he was reasonably sure they couldn't do, or at least not better than he could.

In moments of crisis, people have been known to take in huge numbers of variables and act nearly instantly, a fantastic use of the human brain and its ability to function at speeds still baffling to people after five thousand years of study.

Unfortunately for Kell McDonald, that moment happened half a second
after
he jumped.

Every factor he should have worked out happened at once as he crashed through the water. His clothing, already heavy on land, soaked through immediately. The stream carried him away swiftly, faster than his quick glance suggested, and it was all he could do to stay afloat. His cloak tangled around him like a death shroud, the normally light and maneuverable plastic and cloth sandwich pressing against his limbs and invading every space as he flailed.

Inside armored gloves, his fingers went numb in seconds, making his fumbling effort to untie the cloak's knot impossible.

Cold pushed against him on all sides. The exertion of trying to stay above water did nothing to warm him, each second sending daggers of ice through his flesh. Logical Kell, that observant voice in the back of his head, recognized that his extremities were cooling at an alarming rate. The blood in his arms and legs was being cooled and sent back to his heart, causing his core temperature to drop. It would take a while to die this way, but not long to become so numb as to be functionally unable to help himself.

Without warning, something began choking him. Blind panic set in as the closures on his cloak bit into his neck with crushing force. Dimly, Kell realized the material must have caught on something, leaving him dangling from the end like a worm on a hook. The flow of the creek was stronger here, pulling him with inescapable force even as his own buoyancy bobbed him above and below the water's surface in even, deadly strokes.

One hand shot over his head to grip the fabric, and with an effort that made his muscles feel like they were tearing, he pulled himself up. It was only a few inches, but enough to take the tension from his neck.