The Fall (Book 3): War of the Living (6 page)

Kell trudged through the woods, though it was a quiet sort of trudging. The group Dodger assigned him to was led by a man from New Haven named Troy. Kell couldn't recall meeting him before, but Troy had given Kell a respectful nod in greeting.

“Seen you fight on the wall back home,” Troy said. “Glad to have you.”

“Uh, thanks,” Kell replied. It made sense; a man his size stood out almost anywhere, but especially when running along a narrow catwalk, stabbing zombies in the face.

“Did Dodger give you the details?” Troy asked. Kell shook his head. “Okay, well, we need to stay quiet. Once we get in sight, we open fire.”

Kell blinked. “That's it? We just sit there and shoot at them?”

Troy nodded. “That's all you'll be doing. Other people have other jobs, but you don't need to worry about them. Point your gun, pull the trigger, and don't get shot.”

And that had been that. Kell didn't bother trying to get more information, as Troy had already walked off to take the lead of their column.

The walk wasn't all that far, though the woods were incredibly dense. It was a difficult job, keeping his weapon from snagging on the tangles of brush and other foliage filling most of the space between the trees. Not that there was much of that to begin with. Kell couldn't recall ever seeing a patch of woods more tightly packed.

The natural barrier it created was probably why the Hunters had settled here to begin with. If living people had to struggle this hard to move forward, the undead certainly must have a harder time with it. Of course, the need to move without being heard made the job twice as hard. Once they were closer to the compound, they'd need to make sure not to draw attention by moving any of the brush.

That should be fun,
Kell mused.

As they moved closer to their target, the painted signs stopped appearing. Apparently the scouts who had been watching the place didn't have time to move in closer after clearing the area of sentries. It wasn't a problem, as they followed the narrow access road, but even without it Kell would have known they were approaching civilization of one kind or another.

It was the smell.

The modern world had not died so long ago that Kell didn't remember how different it smelled. Gone were the days of indoor plumbing and ventilation systems. Rolling through the woods, faint at first but thickening with every step, were the mixed scents of humanity doing its best to survive. The familiar aromas of the open sewage pit, the sharp tang of wood smoke, even savory hints of cooking meat.

There was only the barest of breezes, only strong enough to flutter the occasional leaf. Kell tried to wrap his brain around the math of it, but came up short. To be able to smell the place from this distance would require a tremendous number of people cooking and shitting. Unless they were right on top of the place, of course, but Kell heard nothing. No people talking or the hundred pieces of background noise any community would surely have.

Thirty seconds later, Troy raised a fist to halt the group. Kell craned his neck, glancing over Troy's shoulder to catch a glimpse of open sky, a slice of hillside, and the corner of a building in the distance.

Behind his group, others spread out. A huge curving line of people formed, stretching out from the sides of the road. More and more crouched figures slipped into the area to spread out. Soon there were more than Kell could keep track of. They formed ranks, with men and women holding assault rifles and submachine guns in the front and as low to the ground as they could get without laying flat. Behind, and fewer in number, were sharpshooters. Many of the second group set themselves against trees, careful not to shake the branches they used to steady their rifles. In Kell's field of vision alone, no fewer than thirty people put eyes to scopes.

“No activity on the wall,” the nearest sniper reported in a low voice. A wave of similar confirmations swept down the line of them, too quiet for Kell to hear after the first few. “I see four...strike that, five sentries on the wall.”

Kneeling ten feet in front of Kell, Troy whispered over his shoulder. The person behind him did the same, and so on until the order was passed to Kell.

“When you hear shots, move forward until you can see the main gate, and fire.”

Ice in his stomach, heart beating against his ribs like a jackhammer, Kell was so tightly strung that he nearly jumped when the sound of gunfire erupted from the far side of the clearing.

“Now!” Troy barked.

Kell moved forward with the front line of shooters, keeping as low as he could. The man next to him managed to slip between two ferns, finding enough space to lay on his belly to shoot without blocking his line of sight. Kell wasn't as lucky; he knelt and leaned against the trunk of a tree. Steadying his elbow on his knee, he took a measured breath and aimed.

The forest
exploded
with sound. His own weapon bucked in his hands, but that was the only way he knew it was firing. The noise was painful, reminding him of the earplugs he had forgotten in his pocket. The wall of sound was almost a form of sensory deprivation on its own, a wall of sonic force suppressing any lesser noise.

For a moment there was return fire from the wall as the guards there reacted. Kell was firing uphill, though not a steep one, and he saw the guards fire very clearly. Their shots—reactions born from training and fear—were badly aimed, chewing up divots in the grass just in front of the woods.

He was looking when the snipers ended that particular threat, multiple sprays of red filling his vision as he sighted down the iron sights of his rifle.

There was no movement on the wall, which took the edge off his fear. No more guards appeared, and it was hard to blame them given the storm of lead pounding away at their home. It was only then, with no immediate threat, that Kell was able to begin processing what he saw.

The compound was huge. At first guess it appeared to be even larger than it actually was, mainly because he was seeing it at an angle. The walls sloped away to hide behind the curve of the hill, creating the illusion of vanishing into the distance. Even so, the place had to be five hundred feet or more on a side, made up of a combination of earthworks and shipping containers. The bottom of the wall was shaped dirt ten feet high, with the huge metal boxes strung out atop it. It wasn't consistent. There were many empty spaces where containers had either been removed or had not yet been placed. Some of those spaces were filled with debris, packed together to form a barrier. Others had actual walls, brick here, cinder block there, even a few made of wood.

The front gate was thick wood banded with metal, but it was suffering under the hail of bullets. Huge chunks were near to falling off the edges as a million lead bees stung it to death, each tearing away a tiny portion of its flesh. Kell had begun to think the plan might be to destroy the door completely from a distance to allow the fighters to enter the compound, until he heard Troy's shouted command.

“Aim high!”

Kell wished, not for the first time, that Dodger or someone (anyone, really) had given him a comprehensive overview of the plan of attack. He stopped firing long enough to glance around, trying to gain some insight into what Troy was asking, and discovered several of the other front-line shooters around him doing the same.

The mystery was solved when he looked back up the hill. From around the perimeter, men and women emerged from the woods. There were perhaps twenty of them that he could see, none carrying more than a pistol, even that holstered as they ran. All wore bulging packs which bounced heavily as they scrambled up the hill. Kell tilted his gun at a steeper angle, aiming for the top of the wall.

They were no longer firing at full speed. Now the shots came in bursts, though no order had been given. The snipers fired occasional shots, picking off the odd soul brave enough to poke his head over the wall. Kell himself fired a round every five or ten seconds, trying to make his ammunition last. Dodger had given him two extra magazines, and he was nearly through his second.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered to the runners, who were almost at the base of the wall.

In smooth, practiced motions, the runners slowed just enough to shrug off their packs. Kell watched in fascination, forgetting to shoot, as the one nearest him yanked the zipper open and whipped her pack in a high arc without missing a beat. Once the package was away, she spun on her heel and sprinted back to the tree line.

Whatever was in the packs, it clearly wasn't explosives as Kell had half-expected. Five, ten, thirty seconds passed with no deafening booms or plumes of smoke and fire. It was only due to his intense curiosity that he managed an idea of what had happened. A thin curl of what might have been smoke wafted upward, there and gone in a flash. It wasn't smoke, though. Not the kind made by fire. It was a sickly pea green.

Gas. They had thrown ampules of gas.

Not enough to kill or probably even damage a large number of Hunters, but the intent was starting to become clear. Kell's people were doing everything they could to keep the enemy from climbing the walls, driving them into the center as much as possible.

“Cover the truck!” Troy ordered.

Kell was twenty feet from the access road, and felt the rumble through the ground. He glanced at the vehicle as it passed by, and in one terrible moment he knew what was about to happen.

Kell raised his weapon, firing randomly at the top of the wall, though at this point it seemed unlikely anyone was going to appear. He was less worried about enemies raining bullets down on them—impossible at the moment—than he was for something larger and worse. Grenades lobbed over the wall might be a problem, but the smallest that came to mind. Worse would be larger explosives or chemical weapons. Whatever else the Hunters might be, they were dangerous and prepared.

Though it felt like eternity, the assault had only begun a few minutes before. The window of surprise and disorientation was rapidly closing. If a counterattack was coming, it would be soon.

In the corner of his vision, the truck gained speed, lumbering up the access road. It was heavily armored, especially along the front and top. No stray bullets from the Hunters would kill the driver. A smaller vehicle chased behind it, also armored.

The opposite corner of his vision caught movement in the sky. Kell jerked back automatically, his mind immediately going to his thought about grenades, but it was a false alarm. Several brave volunteers had partially ascended the hill to lob small objects onto and over the wall. More of whatever liquid they had thrown before? Grenades?

There were no explosions, no more wisps rising. There were, however, screams. Whatever was being thrown scared the hell out of the people behind the walls. Even as he watched, the throwers moved, some running for new bags of missiles, others continuing their efforts on a new section of wall.

This went on for another minute, which was when the truck and its chase care reached the front gate. Somewhere deeper in the woods, a horn blared, cutting across the field like a knife.

“Cease fire!” Troy shouted. All along the hillside, people ran back to the woods. “Pull back!”

Kell took one last look at the idling truck, with its massive twin tanks. As he stood, he saw its door open and the driver drop to the road. The man stooped, fiddling with something on the bottom of the truck, and raced for the chase car.

“Run!” Troy screamed.

Kell ran.

From where Kell had stood to the nearest wall of the compound had been thirty or forty yards. It was hard to judge. In the time he ran, no longer constrained by a need to stay hidden, he traveled twice that distance back and a good ways to the side, trying to get the corner of the compound and a slope of the hill between his body and the truck. Which wouldn't count for much if the trees began to fall. That was a fun thought.

When the explosion happened, the trees did not fall, though they did shake. Chunks of vegetation crashed into him along with the pressure wave. All sound ended with a monumental crack and boom as the two huge propane tanks mounted on the back of the truck met what Kell assumed was a fairly large amount of dynamite.

Even hundreds of feet away, the blast wave knocked him down. That, combined with the mind-numbing sound, instantly knocked him stupid. Rational Kell didn't speak up from the back of his head to point out the sudden change in air pressure had probably screwed up his balance, because Rational Kell was cursing like a sailor and kicking around the furniture.

The ground was soft. Comforting, really. The quiet was nice, but someone started turning the volume back up. All around, people scrambled as someone shouted at them. More people appeared from other parts of the woods, many of them carrying or even dragging bulging sacks full of hard objects.

Vehicles began to roll up the road. Kell could tell because headlights swept over him. It was a testament to how shaken his brain was that this deduction felt like utter brilliance.

Reality asserted itself once more as he carefully stood. Bodies streamed around him, and a slight gust of wind brought the smell of burning wood and cooking meat once more.

“Oh, god,” he said, before bending at the waist to vomit on the leaves, one hand on the trunk of a tree. People. He was smelling
people
burning.