The Fall (Book 4): Genesis Game (7 page)

Trenton reminded Kell of something, but it took nearly two hours of walking around the place to put his finger on it.

“It's a little like the Shire,” he said when it finally came to him.

“The what?” Lee asked.

“You're right,” Emily said, chuckling. “All the hills, the openings in the ground, it's sort of like Hobbiton.”

“Ooooh,” Lee said, nodding his head. “Yeah, I can see that.”

The comparison was weirdly accurate. Beyond the loose similarities Emily stated, there were others. Food grew everywhere, for one, and the place had the sort of isolated English town vibe Tolkien had tried so hard to get across. The zoo had doubled as a botanical garden, so a wide variety of trees and other flora could be found in clusters at every turn. It gave the place a surreal quality, a small chunk of serenity in an otherwise rugged and dangerous world.

It was certainly a hell of a lot nicer than the death trap they'd stayed at the night before.

The people of Trenton served as a sharp break where the pleasant fantasy diverged from reality. They weren't rude or even impolite, but neither did they offer any sort of help or greetings. It made a lot of sense, when Kell spent a few minutes thinking about it. Living in relative isolation and relying on physical barriers to keep out threats meant anything from the outside was suspect. The bone-deep bonds forged by trusting your neighbor to have your back in a fight just didn't exist here.

A part of him felt distrustful—even a little angry—that these people had it so easy for so long, but Kell didn't hold onto the feeling. It was a stupid way to live your life, holding onto resentment because someone else was lucky enough to avoid the blood and death you had to fight through. Hadn't he isolated himself early in The Fall for that same reason?

Kell spotted a few kids playing as they moved about Trenton, and whatever dregs of anger he felt drained away. Maybe if he'd have moved faster and gotten his family to a place like this...

“Here we are,” Emily said, gesturing toward a re-purposed shipping container partially buried in the side of a hill. “This is where Esther lives.”

Esther would be the third stop on their tour, the previous two candidates refusing to cooperate after lengthy discussions. The first two stops had begun with a fluttering hope in Kell's chest along with the nervous energy of someone about to sit down for a job interview. Now he felt nothing but the bored anticipation of being rejected like a census taker or a political shill begging for donations.

Emily's knock on the door of the makeshift house resounded like a deformed bell as the metal hummed. The sound of footsteps led to a clanging rattle as the lock on the inside was disengaged. The door swung open to reveal Esther, who was smiling. Kell knew it was her from Emily's description, as the woman was unique in the way only people like Mason could be.

A wide, colorful bandanna held back a mane of thick, dark hair lightly threaded with strands of silver. It also held another piece of cloth in place, this one at an angle over what Emily had said was a missing or damaged eye. Rake marks from the zombie who had clawed her eye out ran down her cheek and jaw but missed the major vessels in the neck, which Kell thought a minor miracle.

“Hello!” Esther said, motioning for the three of them to come inside. “I've just put on some tea, if you'd like a cup.”

“Tea sounds great,” Kell said. “I'm a little surprised you have it.”

Esther chuckled. “I spent too many years in England to ever go without it,” she said. “The hill on over my home is where I grow the plants.”

Her accent was a fascinating mix of Dutch and British English that was measured but also fluid. Many people referred to the way people talked as musical, but Esther's voice truly was.

She led them through the shipping container, which held a neat array of shelves packed with tools and supplies, and into a hollow dome full of light. It was a concrete half-sphere that had the same look as many of the other animal shelters, though the rough skylight at the apex must have been added later.

Esther caught Kell staring and motioned for them to sit on one of the faded couches taking up the majority of the space. “It was part of a larger exhibit, this place,” Esther said as they settled in. “The little valley on the other side was a sort of melting pot. Several kinds of animals shared the space.” She waved a hand at the walls, an oddly sharp gesture. “This wasn't a habitat, or so I'm told. They brought different animals to this place to try them out before deciding whether to add a permanent shelter for them on the edge of the valley.”

“Like an airlock,” Lee said, nodding. Esther nodded.

“How did you end up with it?” Kell asked. “Seems like it could fit more people, so why not give it to a family?”

Esther smiled wryly. “I think you've already guessed that. When I had my...accident,” she said, gesturing to the scars running down her face, “Victor thought it best I be put away from too many other people.”

She took a sip of tea and set the cup down carefully. “That's why you're here, yes? To find out what happened to me?”

“Yeah,” Emily said, but Kell put up a hand.

“Not just that,” Kell said. “Knowing what happened will help inform me why you changed as a result. And you did change, didn't you?”

Esther's pleasant manner didn't fade, but froze solid. Emily's previous trip to Trenton had been a fact-finding mission. She identified people who, like Josh, had died just long enough to have Chimera partially take hold but not long enough to become zombies. Where Emily had been carefully subtle, Kell was being blunt.

Not from impatience or in irritation from the rejections they had already faced. Kell wanted to gauge Esther's reaction to being called out. Both to see how she felt about her condition and to determine whether she recognized it in the first place.

“How did you know?” Esther asked, fear saturating her words.

Kell leaned forward and patted her hand. “When people talk for a long time, they tend to take a deep breath before and after. You didn't. You didn't take a breath at all. The organism handles oxygenation of the dead by drawing in air through the pores.” Esther looked horrified, and Kell tried to reassure her. “We don't want to hurt you, Esther. We aren't going to tell anyone. But I think studying you can help me move closer to a cure. Are you willing to help?”

She nodded, some of the tension draining away. “What do you need?”

Kell sat back in his chair. “We'll start at the end. Tell me how you died.”

“It was two years ago,” Esther said, her remaining eye looking somewhere far away. “We were in the middle of expanding our wall. I was helping clear some brush, and one of those things was hiding beneath it. It got hold of my ankle. I fell, and it clawed its way up my body.”

She twisted on the sofa, pulling the hem of her shirt up several inches to reveal sections of long, twisting scars on her abdomen and side. “It was so much faster than the others I'd seen. The smell of it, the noise of its teeth gnashing...it was horrible.”

Esther took a deep, shuddering breath. “I remember the pain from its claws, and then it felt like a giant grabbed me. My chest, jaw, and neck hurt. The world went dark. When I woke up later, the people around me were terrified. I know it must have been a heart attack. I should have stayed dead.”

“They gave me CPR,” Esther said. “Closed my wounds with anything they could find. Duct tape and super glue out there in the field, then stitches later once I came back. They tried to resuscitate me for a quarter hour, and ten seconds after they stopped I sat bolt upright as if nothing had happened.”

Kell nodded. “Exactly like Josh. Like the plague hit a reset button.”

“What I've never understood is how. I mean, aren't heart attacks blockages? How have I never had any ill effects? And my injuries should have been enough to bleed me out, but the people who saved my life said the wounds stopped bleeding within minutes.” Esther shook her head. “It's always been a mystery to me.”

“Well,” Kell said, falling into the old frame of thought from his days as a researcher, “it's not that complex. The organism is symbiotic. It wants the host—that's us—to live. It reacted to your heart stopping by fixing the problem. The same with your wounds. I've got loads of data collected over the years showing how much it has improved our ability to heal. Coagulation isn't a tough job for something spread through every system in your body.”

A thought hit Kell so suddenly and with such strength that it would have knocked him on his ass had he not been sitting. As it was, the tea in his cup slopped over his hand.

“Esther, tell me,” Kell said as he carefully put down his cup. “The others like you, did they all have serious injuries as well?”

She frowned. “You mean wounds? Bleeding and such?” Kell nodded furiously. “Most of them, yes. Freddy didn't. He fractured his ribs, but none of them broke the skin.”

“Internal bleeding, I'd bet anything,” Kell muttered. “I'm a complete moron.”

Lee lightly punched him in the shoulder. “You're doing the thing where you talk to yourself and sound like a crazy person.”

“Sorry,” Kell said, coming back to reality. “I just realized what we've been missing. It's the degree of trauma, not just death itself. The part of the organism that takes control is in the brain. It's modeled after the brain. It must take a certain amount of activity to force it to react, and that somehow lets them come back without becoming zombies.”

“How does that help us?” Emily asked.

“Because,” Kell said, excited, “it means the brain is the key. There has to be some structural difference, some biochemical alteration, that makes it different than the material spread through the body. I'm betting it's something we can exploit. The only problem is that we'd need to study someone like Esther in ways that just aren't ethical. Or even practical, for that matter.”

Esther eyed him. “What do you mean?”

Kell gave what he hoped would be a disarming shrug. “It means unless one of you dies—for real this time—I don't have any way to study the organism in your brain.”

Esther flinched. “Well, thank goodness for ethics, I suppose.”

“Can't you just find a freshly dead person and study them?” Lee asked. “I mean, we've made enough corpses over the years. I'm willing to bet we'll run into another bunch of marauders at some point.”

Kell shook his head. “That's part of the equation, but I need comparisons. Ideally we'd want to take samples from someone who came back the same way Josh and Esther did. There could be any number of chemical changes caused by temporary death.”

“Hang on,” Emily said, her eyes flashing. “What about the New Breed? Isn't your theory that they're more advanced than other zombies because they've died more recently? Wouldn't their brains have the most evolved form of—”

Kell was just about to agree that it was a good idea that would, at the least, probably give them crucial data points. It was an inspired realization, one he should have made himself.

He didn't get the chance, however, because the world chose that moment to go insane. A warbling klaxon filled the air as multiple distant explosions thumped dully.

“Oh, lovely,” Esther said. “We're under attack.”

They ran.

Kell kept up, which was harder than it looked considering it was his shoulder that was injured rather than his leg. The curious thing about systems, especially biological ones, was that the entire thing went out of sync when one part was damaged. Only hours of practice allowed him to maintain his balance without the use of both arms as nature intended.

There was no gunfire, which Kell took as a good sign. The only other option was to assume it was a very bad sign, so he went with the more optimistic choice.

“Do your people not have guns?” Lee panted to Esther, who was running side by side without even breathing hard.

“We do,” she said conversationally. “They are a last resort, however. We have other defenses. If it were living enemies, you'd be hearing gunfire. This is probably just zombies running into the grenade bushes.”

Kell had a powerful desire to know what, exactly, a grenade bush was, but he pushed it aside. A sharp unease filled him, far beyond the usual nerves from facing danger. This was too coincidental, too close to their arrival. Their group had done its best to watch out for anyone following, but no one was perfect. Not even the experts Kell had with him.

If they
had
unintentionally led some danger to Trenton, there was little chance they would make it out alive.

They slowed at the crest of a hill, then stopped to witness the destruction laid out before them. Kell's natural urge to fight was checked by Lee's hand on his arm, gripping firmly enough to remind but not hard enough to hurt.

A relatively level section of ground was clear of fence and vines alike, a ragged hole ten feet across blown through it. The land on this side sloped down slightly toward what Kell could see was a covered trench. On the other side of the fence, another explosion sounded, the force sending the chain link and its cloak of plant life shaking violently. Dust and debris rose in a cloud, and the zombies coming through the gap staggered.

“What the fuck is doing that?” Emily said.

“Those are the grenade bushes,” Esther replied. “Some sections of the wall don't have much in the way of support from existing architecture, so it was easier to design parts of it to fail and then plan for that. The weak spots have explosives dangling inside the vines and brush, just waiting for a zombie to slash at them. When they try to claw their way through, they dislodge the pins. Pretty effective.”

“Nice,” Lee said, a look of profound respect on his face. “That's some next-level shit right there.”

Esther smiled. “Yes, well, it isn't easy. We have to make the explosives, the casings, the ignition systems, and all the rest. It's a lot of tricky work.”

The covering on the trench was sly enough to trick the first wave of zombies to walk over it, dropping a handful into it up to their chests. The citizens who had arrived first began to move in, carefully striking at heads with tools and farming implements.

There were fewer defenders than Kell expected. Probably because the threat was fairly small, or because the place was too damn big to run across quickly. Not like the enclosure Kell had back home, which could generously be described as cozy.

Things were going fine one second, and then not so great the next. A sudden burst of activity through the hole pushed handfuls of zombies into and across the trench, trampled bodies serving as horrific bridges for the swarm that followed.

There were perhaps twenty defenders in place, none of them armored. Others could be seen as specks moving at top speed in the distance, though the sprawling hills made tracking them difficult. It wasn't that the number of zombies seemed high enough to overrun Trenton itself, but that the immediate threat was simply too much for the people at hand.

“Go!” Kell said, pointing with his good arm.

Lee barely hesitated, jetting forward much faster than anyone wearing armored clothing should have been able to manage. Emily stayed, as did Esther. The former didn't want to leave his side, which was as irritating as it was endearing. The latter was without weapons.

“Emily, go help them,” Kell said. “They're a good forty, fifty yards from here. I'm fine.”

“No,” Emily said tersely. “I can't leave you alone.”

“I won't be,” Kell said, trying to reassure. “Esther is here with me. Here, I'll give her a baton.” He did, unhooking the heavy weapon he had trained with from its spot on his right side and handing it over. “Worst case scenario, I can always run. Go help those people. Please.”

Unlike Lee, Emily didn't hesitate once the decision was made. Had she chosen to stay with Kell, there would have been no hemming and hawing, no guilt. Conversely there wasn't so much as a stutter in her step as she trotted off.

“I'm not much of a fighter,” Esther said, dry amusement twined with concern in her voice.

Kell snorted. “You were mauled to death by a dead man, yet here you are. I'll put my money on that sort of toughness.”

Five minutes later things took a turn.

The deliberately weakened fence had been reinforced on either side of where the designers wanted the breach to form, but the subsequent explosions combined with the weight of zombie bodies to cause a wider split. It wasn't much as the overall length of the wall went, but the opening grew by five feet almost instantly as supports failed.

A thin spot in the line of defenders caused it to buckle and temporarily fail in much the same way, allowing a fist of zombies to punch through and get behind the line. To their credit, the defenders changed formation instantly, putting themselves back to back.

Not all of the zombies went for that easy kill, though. Some ran into Trenton as fast as they could manage. The easiest route was also the one with two meals standing right in the middle of it, and Kell almost sighed in relief at the prospect of a fight.

“We should run,” Esther said.

“There aren't that many of them,” Kell replied, which was true. Half a dozen in a group, a couple singletons trailing distantly. “Besides, everyone else is occupied. If we can stop them here, we should.”

People were still showing up for the fight, which seemed to have lasted hours rather than a handful of minutes. The problem was the general chaos below, and the additional fighters only added to it. With a glut of zombies inside the defenses, it was nearly impossible for latecomers to join the fractured line.

Kell had no idea where Kincaid or Mason were, but like Emily he made his decision with finality. Protected or not, he wouldn't let any zombies past to harm unprepared citizens. His thoughts drifted briefly to the children he had seen earlier.

“Do you want this club back?” Esther asked.

“Not at all,” Kell said. “I have other weapons. Another one of those, too.”

He slipped one of those weapons around the wrist of his injured arm as well as stuffing a sheathed knife from his pocket inside the sling. Kell cinched the straps tighter with quick movements. After that he extended the police baton with a flick and set his feet.

The zombies didn't slow as they closed in on Kell and Esther, though they did spread out. Predator tactics. Kell had checked the ground nearby to make sure there were no surprises, but the concrete sidewalk was surprisingly intact for its years of exposure. He supposed the residents would have cared for them, unwilling to give up such a useful path through their home.

Mindful of his balance, Kell gave the nearest zombie no chance to get its bearings. He did exactly as Lee taught him, attacking using big movements to counteract the balance problems caused by his bound limb. The result was something like ballet, Kell's body rotating with the wide swing of the baton. His right leg swept around the pivot of his left while his left arm tore through the air in a wide arc to smash the tip of the weapon into the side of the zombie's head.

Kell's momentum reversed at the end of the arc. As the first zombie's head caved and the body began to fall, he lashed in a reverse swing at a second. This required a stuttered, jumping step which ended with mixed results. The zombie went down, which was great, but his odd movement had put his aim off as well as made the zombie react. End result: baton through the eye and nearly through the back of the skull by the feel of it.

Reflex made him release the weapon as he felt it being pulled from his hand. Many a soldier and survivor had met their end chasing down a stuck knife or sword.

A third zombie reached Kell before he could ready another weapon, and the impact of the filthy thing against his frame rocked him on his heels. Fortunately, Kell was able to get his left forearm up in time, letting the zombie claw and bite the heavy armor sewn into the material.

Kell was considering the best way to get the thing off him, favoring a hard kick to the midsection, when Esther saved his ass with a heavy thwack of the baton. She used both hands, which made for an impressive swing.

“Thanks,” Kell said, panting. “Nice form.”

Esther's smile crinkled the corner of her remaining eye. “Tennis, love. Years and years of tennis.”

With a grin, Kell reset himself and aimed for the next zombie. This turned out to be a pair of them. He grabbed the first with his good arm and tried to kick the second backward using the one he was holding as an anchor, but the second zombie wasn't there. A flash of movement crossed his field of vision, spearing the second zombie at full speed.

Kell's kick, without an object of resistance, sent him badly off balance. He tumbled to the ground with the zombie held at arm's length. They landed in a jumble of arms and legs, Kell furiously trying to avoid having his face slashed to ribbons. Training took control again, forcing Kell to hold the thrashing zombie with his legs as he tried to turn the fight to his advantage.

Sickening wetness seeped through his clothes as he locked his ankles together and shimmied around the captive zombie by careful movement of his knees and hips. He tried not to think about what sort of fluids were saturating his clothes, which actually wasn't that hard in the face of grappling with a nightmarish cannibal.

The zombie tensed again, then burst into furious motion. It spun within the confines of Kell's legs wrapped around its torso, but he was ready for it. Its body was in almost perfect position, and Kell didn't let the opportunity pass. He let go with his good arm, reached into the sling on his right, and wrapped his fingers around a small wooden handle.

He pulled, careful not to yank too fast or hard in case the wire attached to the handle caught on his hand. The wire was thin enough to make it hard to see in good conditions, which made aiming it for the neck of the zombie trivially easy. Kell felt the tension in the wire as he pulled it tight, the other end attached to the handcuff secured around his right wrist. It made for a solid (if awkward) anchor point.

The zombie realized something was wrong, but by then it was too late. Kell flexed his entire body, pulled the wire as taut as he could manage, and felt the satisfying scrape telling him the wire had reached bone.

For Kell it was easy. Simple. Just a matter of physics. You take a strong, thin wire and put constant tension on it, and with enough pressure it will cut through almost anything. So when he felt the wire skip along the vertebrae, he pulled up ever so slightly to change the direction of its travel.

The wire bucked as it found the channel between vertebrae, then smoothed out as it severed the nerves within.