The Fall (Book 3): War of the Living (2 page)

The leader of the assault walked through the widening gap as the truck pulled away, breaking Kell's reverie. Everyone called the man Dodger, a name earned during his military service, and the reason everyone called him that was because he refused to answer to anything else. Normally laid back, Dodger was a different man on the battlefield. Gone were the laugh lines around his mouth, the fine web of wrinkles at the corner of his eyes now deepened by anger rather than a smile. His posture was tense as he walked up to Kell and Andrea.

Dodger's entire demeanor changed when he laid eyes on the prisoner. The anger and frustration evaporated as though it had never been, replaced by the elation of a child at Christmas.

“You guys caught one of them?” he asked, though it wasn't really a question. “Things got heavy in there. We didn't think there were any survivors.”

Kell frowned. The entire purpose of the attack, apart from taking down one of the bands razing communities of survivors to the ground, was to take prisoners. New Haven wasn't just Kell's home, it was the central community in a huge web of cooperative groups of survivors. They were leading the fight against the bands of former soldiers, dubbed the Hunters, who were systematically annihilating camp after camp of innocent people. Without new information, their small war against the Hunters was doomed to failure.

“What happened?” Kell asked, his voice raspy from dehydration. Fighting had worked him into a sweat. “Didn't seem that bad from out here.”

Dodger shook his head, bitterness lining his mouth. “They fought hard. Too hard. We expected to kill a bunch of them in the initial attack, but they reacted too fast. We figured at least a handful would give up the fight once they realized they couldn't win, but those bastards just kept coming.”

“Except that one,” Andrea said, jerking her head toward the bound soldier. “He tried to run for it.”

“If you wouldn't mind,” Dodger said to Kell, “grab him and follow me. We need to interrogate him as soon as possible.”

Not for the first time, Kell felt a deep pang of disquiet. New Haven wasn't like North Jackson, the first community he had joined. There, safety depended on heavy walls and a rigid command structure, both of which had their weaknesses. New Haven had none of the corruption in the leadership he had discovered in North Jackson, but there were trade-offs.

Dodger was a kind man, but the hard look in his eyes as he asked Kell to bring the prisoner seemed to belong to someone else. Like almost everyone from New Haven, Dodger had a hard edge just below the surface.

These people would do almost anything to ensure the survival of their community. In theory this was an attitude Kell could appreciate and understand. They weren't a bloodthirsty lot, just...resigned. Willing to do what they must, without hesitation.

It was seeing this in practice that filled him with doubt. His new home was full of good and decent people, but they were being pushed by the Hunters and other aggressors right up to the limit of what they could handle. Kell's fear was not that New Haven was full of evil people.

It was for what they would become when finally pushed too far.

Two days after their successful assault on the Hunter camp, the strike force began to plan the next. The prisoner, faced with being impossibly outnumbered and utterly at the mercy of his captors, relented after only mild questioning, giving them invaluable information. Dodger didn't take his word for it; scout teams were sent out immediately to verify his claims.

It didn't take long. The captive, a font of information named Martinez, confirmed several suspicions about the mysterious group. The Hunters worked from a central hub, a massive compound a few hundred miles west of New Haven itself and hidden well enough to be effectively invisible unless you were right on top of it. They worked in units, each handling a set of communities. That was how Martinez put it.
Handling
,
as if razing the homes of survivors was as simple as taking out the trash.

Kell sat on a tree stump at the edge of their camp, slowly running a file down the point of his spear. The aluminum was tough but did need some attention, though at the moment the point was as deadly as it had ever been. The movement was solely an activity to occupy his hands while he thought, as much a habit in the new world as talking to himself over petri dishes had been in the old.

“If you keep thinking that hard, your brain is going to freeze that way,” a voice said from over his shoulder.

Kell turned with a smile. “Kate,” Kell said. “When did you get here?”

The small woman threw a heavy duffel to the ground, then plopped onto it. Flexing her back, she yawned. “Just now. Dan and I volunteered for the resupply, along with a couple others. Thought you might like to see a few more familiar faces.”

Kell's smile grew. As much as he loved Kate, Dan showing up would inevitably lead to better and more regular food. Not that the guy was an amazing chef or anything, but his ability to organize the shit out of almost any group of people bordered on the supernatural. Which, in a world where survival was the primary concern of pretty much everyone, and food was on top of the survival check list, usually meant Dan made sure everyone had plenty of top-notch grub on hand.

“I thought Laura would come on this trip, actually,” Kell said. “She hasn't left New Haven in months.”

Kate frowned slightly, the corners of her mouth deepening with lines. “I offered to let her take my spot,” she said. “Didn't want to come. She looked...hell, man, if I didn't know her better I'd say she was scared. Laura, of all people.”

She laughed as if this were the most absurd idea possible, but Kell rubbed a finger along the stubble dusting his jaw. “Yeah, I was starting to get that impression too.”

Kate blinked. “Seriously?
Laura
?”

“Well, yeah,” Kell said. “Don't you think she's been through enough to warrant being frightened? You'd know better than anyone, Kate. You went through most of it with her.”

“I dunno,” Kate said. “It's not like anything major has happened lately. She hasn't even been out of New Haven since we got there.”

“She was
injured
,” he said, setting down file and spear. “She couldn't go with us to Iowa. You know that ate at her. She was safe at home for the first time in ages. I think maybe she got used to it. Stress can wear away at you for a long time, and the last straw can be the smallest thing. I think maybe getting from North Jackson to New Haven was Laura's. She's spent a lot of time here instead of being on the road. Hard to blame her for not wanting to risk doing it again.”

They sat in silence for a little while. It was easy enough, given the lack of anything else to do. Hundreds of miles from home, provisioned to the gills, and with sentries posted to warn of any attacks, there simply wasn't any work. Kell would have preferred almost any amount of backbreaking labor over boredom and being stuck with nothing to do but think about the job ahead. Laura wasn't the only one getting anxious. Being shot at has that effect.

“How'd the last trip to John go?” he asked after a few minutes, keeping his voice low.

Kate glanced around to make sure they wouldn't be overheard. “It was hard, and every trip there gets harder. Finding excuses to send our people out with the scouts is getting more difficult. Lucky for us, we managed to get a team to the remains of John's old lab. The supplies we left there were still good, so we hauled everything we could find to John's place. He's set for supplies for years.”

Kell nodded, his thoughts focused on the lonely farmhouse John Liebowitz hid and worked in. John had been Kell's partner in the days before The Fall, the only man beside Kell himself who knew every secret of Chimera, the organism that caused the dead to rise. Finding John alive was a shock. Kell had never known the exact location of the bunker he was to have been moved to just as the plague began to spread. Finding it had been the goal of the mission, but no one expected to find anyone alive there, much less someone working on a cure.

During that trip, Kell and his people encountered a massive group of survivors looking for the bunker, as well as John and Kell—anyone who knew Chimera—in order to take them prisoner. To force them to work on a cure. It was something John and Kell both wanted to do anyway, but the methods of the group, who called themselves the United American Survivors, weren't conducive to a good working environment.

The Hunters were the most obvious example of those methods. One of several arms of the UAS, the Hunters went into the world to annihilate entire communities for their supplies. Working for them, even under coercion, was not an option.

“We may have to cut off our trips to John for a while,” Kate continued. “With the UAS out in force all over the place, we're putting him at risk every time we make a run there. He has everything he needs to work on the cure. It's probably safer to let him do it and keep away from him until things cool down.”

Kell laughed bitterly. “Cool down? Not likely. Our prisoner tells us there are more than a thousand of these Hunters. They've got plans to hit a few munitions depots in the near future, and after that...”

“If they do, New Haven doesn't stand a chance,” Kate said, her face grim.

“Yeah,” Kell agreed. “For now they're knocking over small settlements, just enough to keep themselves fed. They have fuel and equipment, but they need ammunition and food. The prisoner gave us a rough timetable for all of their major moves.”

Glancing around the camp, Kate nodded. “Everyone's ready to leave at a moment's notice. No tents, no gear that isn't easy to grab and go. Looks like we showed up right in time.”

“It wasn't coincidence,” Kell said. “Dodger is planning the attack right now, and he needs everyone he can get. You and the rest of the supply crew aren't heading back home. You're fighting with us.”

Kate grinned. “Good. It's been too long since I had a good fight.”

Her enthusiasm pulled a smile from him, but it was tempered with caution. The last fight was still fresh in his mind, the memory of adrenaline pumping and blood rushing loud in his ears. What they were doing—attacking in the open, hours away from any possible rescue or support—was risky beyond imagining. They did it because the choice was between taking that risk or letting those small communities die.

Kell thought of those people, most of them farmers now, working from dawn to dusk to feed themselves. Families, many of them. People with loved ones. A memory sparked and caught in the back of his mind; a wife and child long lost.

He would not allow that to happen to these people. He refused to let the Hunters take from them what had been taken from him.

Though he had reservations about the sheer volume of blood being spilled in the conflict with the Hunters, and by proxy the UAS, Kell still felt a thrill of excitement that the conflict was at least changing. The original plan had been for him and his group to leave New Haven shortly after relocating John to the safe house. That had been early in the year, and now November loomed. The conflict had been stagnant for months, and however distasteful it might be, picking this fight was the only way to disrupt the status quo.

The problem was the Hunters and the UAS, of course. So long as they were looking for someone to capture, someone who knew the plague well enough to possibly create a cure, it was a bad idea for Kell to join John in his work. Will Price, the leader of New Haven, frequently made this point by referring to the old saw about eggs being in one basket.

Kell tried not to get his hopes up that the fight would be over quickly. Instead of dwelling on the possibility during the hours of travel to their next destination, he instead stood in the back of the truck and enjoyed the scenery. This time of year brought a riot of colors, the trees exploding in reds and yellows, with bluish evergreens dotting the landscape here and there.

“How far to the staging area?” Kate asked, raising her voice above the sound of the engine and the wind.

“Not far,” Kell replied. “They're camped ten miles out from Oakwood, a little group of about thirty people.”

Kate screwed up her face in thought. “Why does that sound familiar?”

“Oakwood is one of our refineries,” Kell said. “They're the westernmost outpost we're affiliated with. New Haven supplies them with food, clothes, everything they need. In return they turn our crude oil into gas.”

“I thought the Hunters didn't need fuel,” Kate said.

“They don't,” Kell replied. “We have the huge oil reserve up north, the UAS has one in the south. But it's a good strategic target. Wouldn't kill us, but it would strain our supply lines. Not to mention Oakwood keeps several tons of food in storage at all times, just in case.”

And that, Kell suspected, was the real prize. The UAS was big and getting bigger all the time. Moving across a third of the country was costly in fuel and manpower, yet the UAS did it constantly. His first encounter with their people had been early in the year. It was a group of men and women out on a hunting trip, stripping the surrounding area of all game and shipping it back to the homestead. The actual number of the enemy was vague, but if there were less than several thousand of them, Kell would have been shocked.

And that many people required a lot of calories.

Afternoon light faded into dusk, painting the sky with bands of pink, purple, and orange stark against the deepening blue. Along with the changing autumn landscape, it made for a breathtaking sight.

Darkness fell just as the convoy reached their campsite. Kell was one of a handful of people who had stayed awake the entire day. Most of the group slept as best they could after their efforts the previous night. Some would grumble and complain about taking on another group of Hunters so soon, griping about exhaustion, but they would manage just as well on the repeat performance.

It wasn't something he could discuss with them, that odd stamina. Most survivors never noticed a difference. The physiological changes brought on by the Chimera grown through their bodies like moss in the cracks of a stone were subtle. For all that, the changes added up one by one, rendering each person into something slightly better than they had been before.

Kell could go without sleep for more than two days before his mind began to falter. He was stronger, faster, and could keep a high level of activity for much longer than any point in his life to date. This did not make him unique among survivors. While he couldn't flip a car or run a mile in four minutes, the improvements did make a difference.

The few people who had noticed the difference mostly wrote it off. Rationed food brought weight loss, and the demanding life of a survivor made you strong or killed you. And those people weren't entirely wrong in their rationalizations; much of their improved stamina and strength was the result of exercise and diet.

It wasn't that Chimera made them superhuman. It simply made it easier to be
better
.

Kell helped Kate unload their gear and checked the time. “We've got about four hours before we leave,” he said as he unrolled his sleeping bag. “I'm going to take a nap.”

He didn't need the sleep, really, but that was hardly the point. His reactions would be better with a little rest, a fact he recognized as his own rationalization. The real reason was simple, even if he consciously avoided it.

Sleep would allow him a short reprieve from thinking about what he was about to do.

Five hours and a fitful, restless nap later, Kell was back in his element. He moved slowly on his belly, inching forward along the path laid out by the scouts. Their report had been exhaustive in its detail, from guard rotation patterns to the habits of the men inside the camp. Though many groups of Hunters were made up of military men and women, it was the opinion of the scouts that the majority of this group were conscripts. Survivors.

But not survivors as Kell and his people knew them.

It was taken as a fact of life that anyone who had survived The Fall to this point was tough. The world eroded away the weak parts of a person, leaving only the strong core behind. Kell thought of it like water washing away the dirt around the base of a tree to expose the sinewy roots below. These men were different. and the same could be said of the UAS soldiers he had met back in March. It was the same game plan then as now, with the head of the operation manned by experienced soldiers, the rest made up of ordinary people.