The Fall: Victim Zero (13 page)

The respirator hid his clenched teeth. “I don't need help, thanks,” Kell said.

Keeping pace with him, the monster vehicle rolled forward. The blonde snorted. “Mister, you're walking toward the middle of town. You don't even have a car.”

“
I walk there at least twice a week,” Kell said, voice low. He was unable to hold back his annoyance. “And as you can see, I'm clearly capable of keeping myself from being eaten. Unless you keep drawing attention to me, of course.”

“
Shit!” someone inside the cab of the truck shouted. “They're coming.”

His eyes had been relaxed halfway between the ground and the road ahead, but the note of fear in the man's voice made Kell snap them up. A dozen zombies breasted the hill in front of them, coming toward the sound of the truck.

“Goddammit,” Kell said. “You people have just cost me a whole day.”

The woman smiled and gestured toward the driver. “If you're bent on walking in there, we can help you clear them out. We have to drive that way, anyway.”

Kell shook his head. “It's not that easy. They heard your engine. These will just be the first of hundreds. Maybe thousands.” The approaching cluster of undead gained speed. “Though we might want to take care of these.”

The truck door opened and the woman jumped out, assault rifle in hand. He put an armored glove on the stock as she sighted. “No!” Kell whispered harshly. “Think about what I just said. Your truck was enough noise to get their attention. Do
not
use that gun.”

The swarm was closing in. Eyes on the undead, the woman frowned. “What am I supposed to do, then?”

Kell stepped away and pulled a string dangling from the complicated knot that held his cloak on and close around him. The heavy garment pooled on the ground.

“
Watch,” Kell told her.

The nearest enemy was ahead of the others. A common occurrence in swarms—there were always some outliers faster than others.

The spear slid from its holster with practiced ease. A few wide steps later and the point sheared through the soft palette of the foremost zombie, followed by a sharp pull on the haft as he pushed the motionless body away. He stepped to the side of the fresh corpse and swung his weapon like a staff, catching the next enemy in the temple with the blunt end. He heard the thin bone there shatter, and as the second body fell, it became nothing to him. Just an obstacle lying on the road to be avoided during the fight.

By then the rest of the swarm had begun to converge; the next two were shoulder-to-shoulder. Staff held parallel to the ground, both zombies were hit at the same time, the bar snapping bones in their faces and knocking them down but not killing them outright.

Kell danced back and to the right, avoiding the bodies he'd left behind him. He flipped the spear over in his hands and thrust it into the closest of them, leaving it sticking up in the air as if to say, “I claim this land in the name of crazy people who live alone in the woods!”

He pulled the two ice axes from their loops on the front of his vest. Their blades and handles were worked smooth, the result of hours of grinding them by hand. The familiar calm fell over him as he moved into the fray, trusted weapons ready.

The fight was a blur of motion. Kell didn't rush, didn't risk. He moved in and the checklist built up over months from trial and error took over. His mind took in details and they caused instant reactions, like a machine working solely on feedback.

This one is limping, left foot dragging.
He kicked at the injured foot and felt whatever was left of the ankle give out, the bone jutting through skin. He kept moving as the zombie fell, knowing he could come back and finish it off. Minimize threats. Don't waste time.

His armored fists, each holding the haft of an axe, fired like pistons as he waded into the fray. His armor was tested and true; he wasn't afraid of bites. Even his neck had protection, a thick layer of cloth he could barely cut through with a knife, much less teeth.

Size was definitely an advantage here. Even after the weight loss Kell was still a heavy man. Gauntleted fist to the face of one zombie, stunning it, elbow to another, axe blade down through the top of the third's head. Move, move, move.

That one rears back, ready to throw her upper body forward in a grasping bite.
At the moment the zombie was as far back as she would bend, ready to lash out, Kell hip checked her as hard as any hockey player, sending her tumbling. He brought a heel down on her head as he went past, enough force to shatter her skull like an egg.

That was how it played out; a fight that looked ungainly and random yet ultimately won by the man instead of the monsters. Kell thought nothing of it, a dance he did on a regular basis. Sometimes it was close, especially with odds this high, but the travelers watching from the truck seemed to take some of the attention off him.

Once several of the undead were down it wasn't much of a conflict. Precision blows thinned those still standing until he no longer had to strike out constantly. Then there were no undead left on their feet and the rest was cleanup. One sharp hit each, a pull, and on to the next.

In the end the only zombie left moving was the one whose ankle he had shattered. It was trying to stand and move forward at the same time, but lacked the balance needed to manage the feat. Coldly, he observed as the thing inched toward the truck, hauling itself up onto its palms and pushing forward with the good leg. Experience taught the dead do not feel pain; the broken limb was simply too damaged to have any function left in it.

He circled around and retrieved his spear and ended its suffering.

There were no more undead coming over the swell of the hill, but that didn't mean they wouldn't. Quickly he wiped the weapons down with a cloth from the pouch at his hip, then stowed them.

As he tied the cloak back on, Kell studied the woman still watching him with a shocked expression. She was tall, maybe five eight, and well fed. Her clothes were either new—well, new
ish
anyway—or had been taken care of. Her hair was short but nicely trimmed, and that along with a dozen other details made him sure she had to have come from a community. Civilization, if such a thing still existed.

“
Jesus, man, you just went right out there and fought 'em. With your fucking hands! Like, I just watched you punch a zombie in the face, for real,” she said, slightly awed.

Kell nodded.

“You a martial artist or something?”

“
No,” he replied, laughing. “Not at all.”

“
Okay, because I wasn't going to say anything, but that was pretty sloppy. A couple of them bit you, dude, but you didn't seem to notice. I had an uncle used to get into bar fights. You looked like him, just brawling.”

Kell shrugged and tapped a finger against one of the hard plates in his pants. “They can't bite me through this. And I don't care what it looked like. Got the job done.”

He
had
almost lost his balance a few times, though he didn't mention that. Every fight was a lesson in what mistakes not to make.

The woman scratched her head. “Well, we're heading south if you want to join us. There's a compound of some kind in central Kentucky we're joining up with. Rest of our people came through this morning, but they went around the west side of the city. We're taking a shortcut.”

“That,” Kell said, pointing toward the city, “is the worst shortcut in the known universe. Go around. You won't make it half a mile before you're swarmed and dead. There are probably fifty thousand of those things left in town.”

She recoiled in shock. Up in the cab, the driver swore and leaned his head out. He was an older man and clearly related to the woman. “Don't suppose you could give us directions, could you?”

The woman laughed. “I've been your daughter for twenty-five years, and that's a first.”

“
Extenuating circumstances, Susie,” the driver said with a smile. “How about it, Mister?”

More zombies began to appear at the top of the hill, and Kell took a calming breath. “All right. Let's not do it here, though. I'll hop in the back. You turn around and head north. I'll guide you to a safe spot where we can talk.”

There were four of them crammed in the truck: Susan—Susie to her father, Glen, and no one else on pain of death—and two passengers that were family friends, Ronnie and Jeremy. The five of them sat in a clearing just off the highway. The travelers were unaware, but they brought Kell nearly all the way home.

From a pocket he produced a notebook and pencil. He began to sketch a map of the route, and Susan laughed. The others looked sideways at her.

“What?” she said. “Come on, he's dressed like that, covered in weapons, lives in the woods, and he carries around a neat little notebook? That's comedy gold.”

The youngest member of the group, Jeremy, was the only one to smile. Kell went back to drawing his map and tore the page out when he was done. “There,” he said. “That should take you safely around most of the swarms.” He stood to leave.

“Wait,” Glen said. “Look, we can take you with us. The place we're going is safe. You don't have to live out here on your own.”

For a moment, the profound loneliness inside him swelled up out of its cage. There was no sign of it on his face or in his mannerisms; but he did sit down. Glen took that as an opportunity to sell the place.

“It's a lot safer than Xenia, where we came from. They're working on a wall, and they're farming and everything. They even have internet access somehow, and--”

Kell leaned forward. “They have electricity?”

Possibilities moved through his brain at the speed of light. With power he could work on the solution. It would take him a long time to gather the supplies and machinery he would need, but eventually...

“
Well, they have a little. Some solar panels and a few turbines. But man, that's just icing on the cake. They have food, weapons, security. We don't have room in the cab, but you're welcome to ride in the back and we can switch out in a few hours.”

There was a hopeful look on Glen's face, the sort of desperate need to help that came with watching too many good people die. Kell hesitated. Four months had passed since the last time he'd spoken to a living human being, and he found himself not wanting it to end. If he refused their offer, they would leave, and he would be alone again.

The place didn't sound ideal for his needs, but as he scanned the woods for threats and thought about the shack he lived in, he admitted his current situation was even worse.

“
What kind of notes do you keep in there?” Jeremy asked.

Kell's attention moved back to his guests. “Observations, mostly. That's how I learned to fight them. I watch, remember, and write it down.”

The young man's eyebrows shot up. “Really? You just kind of
observed
your way into being a badass?”

“
I wouldn't call myself that,” Kell said with a chuckle. “I've been in too many close calls. I wouldn't have even fought those ones earlier if you hadn't been there. They were distracted.”

“
But you had survival training or something, right?” Jeremy eyed Kell's gear.

“
No. Actually I figured out pretty early that those things operate strongly by smell. Normal people can douse themselves like I did with my cloak and walk right through them. The rest I learned at the library.”

Jeremy gaped at him, disbelieving. “What, like when you were a kid?”

Kell let out a laugh, the first real one he'd had in ages. “It was about three and a half months ago. I camped in there for four days, gathering everything I thought I'd need to learn. Must have read thirty, forty books since then.”

“
Damn,” Jeremy said. “That's crazy. I can't imagine just reading about this stuff and doing it.”

“
It wasn't perfect,” Kell said with a shrug. “There was a lot of trial and error, but I'm a scientist. I'm used to observing and learning from my mistakes.”

“
What kind of scientist?” Susan asked, her pixie face curious.

Kell cleared his throat to buy time. This conversation was veering into dangerous territory.

“Doesn't really matter anymore,” he said, standing once more. “I don't want to slow you folks down more than I already have. I might make my way down that direction one day. Be safe.”

He walked over to the tree his where he'd draped his cloak and fastened it. A hand grasped his arm and turned him around.

Susan looked into his eyes, her neck craned to manage it.

“
I know you're not used to being around people, but you can't stay out here. You'll get sloppy or unlucky someday, and you'll die. You can't survive forever by just...observing things. Eventually you'll need someone to watch your back. Hell,
we
could have been marauders for all you knew, and you walked into the street to fight with guns pointed your way.”

There was something in her tone that went straight into him. It was a tenderness, a fear for his safety entirely out of proportion to the scant time she'd known him. Understanding that helped him recognize the same chord of worry for them in his own heart. The origin was obvious, and even then his deeply analytical mind broke it down.