“That makes sense.”
The corner of her mouth twitched into a smirk. “You say that like it's a surprise.” Kell tried to sputter a response, but she laughed. “I'm just messing with you. I don't know what kind of place you come from, but in the wilds there aren't a lot of resources. You can't just drop everything and go find a fight.”
Thinking back to his watchful nights at the house in Michigan, Kell decided to keep to himself that he'd been doing exactly that.
The miles passed slowly, the car never pushing double digits on the speedometer. The road was mostly clear and kept that way by the caravans of traders using it to pass between Kentucky and North Jackson, but he didn't want to take any chances. Now and then he curved around a zombie attracted by the engine noise. They were sparse, though, the area too devoid of easy prey to allow for a large population. His own time in the cabin by himself was proof of that; even only a few miles outside a large city he'd been mostly safe. Those days came back to him as he watched the landscape roll by.
“What was it like, the place you left behind?” Andrea asked, bringing him out of his reverie. “Why did you leave?”
Eyes on the road, he weighed his answer. “It was a lot like places used to be. Good people, bad people, and some of both running the whole thing. But I didn't live in the main community. It was too crowded to fit even half the population.”
“Is that why you left? Too many people?”
It would have been easy to say yes. Easy to tell a half-truth. The longing in his chest, the surprising and ragged hole ripped wide when he'd been separated from his people, throbbed. Andrea wasn't a friend, not yet, but she'd proven herself worthy of honesty.
“Sort of. They've been working on sending settlers down to Kentucky for a while. Jackson has a lot of people, too many, and a lot of manufacturing. Kentucky has agriculture and specialized goods, but not enough people. My friends and I got bumped to the front of the line. Partly because the women I shared a place with decided to leave their responsibilities at the main community to come live with me, but mostly due to something we did.”
“Which was?” Andrea prompted.
“There were some marauders hunting the edges of the area we lived in. A lot of us moved a few miles out of town, and these fu--” he caught himself, remembering the kids. “These guys were capturing women and even a few men, though they used the men for hard labor and killed them. The women they kept alive.”
A short silence fell, as dense as it was brief. No clarification was needed.
“We tried to get the leadership to send a team out, but they basically said no. They wouldn't risk sending enough soldiers to do the job. It was purely cost/benefit analysis. I did that a lot in the lab, choosing what lines of work would be likely to have the best results. As a scientist, I understood. You don't risk the lives of twenty or more soldiers when they're your protection from zombies. You don't waste the ammo when it's likely the captives will be killed right after the fight starts.”
That hard, cold edge crept back into Andrea's voice. “I see the reasoning. It's awful, but some people back where we used to live had to make a similar choice. You didn't agree, did you?”
“No,” Kell said. “My roommates, my only real friends, had been through that. We'd have killed those women rather than let it continue. We gathered volunteers and took them back. Killed a lot of men to do it. But we got them out safe.”
The memories clawed for his attention. The thrill of holding the dead man's switch, of the run away from the burning camp. The dark satisfaction of killing the leader of the group with his own hands. Not joy, not happiness, but a primal sense of justice. It made him--
It made him want to fight. The sick feeling in his stomach was there, the revulsion he'd plastered over at the acts he had committed. Right with it was the urge to kill, to end threats, to stand up and risk himself for something better. For the second time that day he considered the possibility that his growing recklessness might be a defense mechanism.
“The leadership couldn't punish us, of course. They knew we hadn't done anything wrong. But they didn't want to set a precedent. It was, again, simple math. If people went out trying to take matters into their own hands, it could lead to a breakdown in the fragile community they built. Probably didn't help that folks started to realize the bosses left some of their number to the wolves, you know? They wanted us gone so we didn't cause even more problems down the road, so everyone who volunteered for our little trip got chosen for the migration. Me, Kate, Laura, the people who fought with us, their families, and even some of our neighbors who didn't fight but stood up for us when the word of our imminent deportation came down.”
Andrea shifted in her seat. “It makes sense in a grim way. Back...before, when we were in a community, we had something similar happen. Four men and three women vanished out on a gathering trip. We knew where they were supposed to be, but didn't have enough extra bodies to send out a search party. At least, that was the justification we used. We probably could have managed it. We knew there were bandits in the area. They'd hit us a few times. Seemed like that was as likely as being taken by ghouls, and knowing that we still chose to do nothing. Not because we didn't care. It was because we didn't care enough to kill ourselves. I could have gone, but I'd have risked leaving my kids without a parent. Without their mother. Chances were, those people were dead. But it just didn't add up. We couldn't throw good money after bad to be sure.”
She cleared her throat. “I've thought about it a lot since then, and it eats at me. I hate thinking about all the things that might have happened to them. Things I might have stopped. But if I had to make the same choice all over again, I'd do the same thing for the same reasons.”
The silence then was lighter than the first, more companionable.
“Still,” Andrea said, breaking it. “I'm glad you did what you did. Even if it was stupid.”
“Take that exit,” Andrea said, pointing to an off-ramp. The gas light was on, the needle hovering solidly in the red zone. “I know this town. I used to come through here on business trips all the time.”
Kell obliged, coasting down the gentle slope with—ironically—greater speed than he'd been driving. He didn't know this part of Ohio well, but there wasn't any evidence of a town from where he sat. Just trees.
“Take a right at the bottom. The town is only about a quarter mile away. Stop at the building with wood siding. You'll know the one.”
It was an interesting place, with none of the high signs for fast food restaurants or gas stations most little roadside towns carried. It wasn't small, though. There were name-brand stores lining the main road, and houses visible in the distance. It seemed simply like a quiet place, a community satisfied with what it was without shouting to the world that it existed.
Kell expected the building in question to be some run-down old shop or house, the wood silvered by the elements and with doors hanging off the hinges. The reality was the complete opposite. They pulled into an overgrown gravel lot next to the place, a massive two-story building covered in seemingly new reddish wood planks. The windows were shuttered, the dark green paint without a hint of peel, and the front door looked like the entrance to a bank vault.
Andrea got out of the car without hesitation, the rest of the group following. There were no zombies around, in fact none at all that Kell could see. The corollary followed that the town itself must be empty as well. Even the best-hidden hermit had to leave his place sometime, and human scent inevitably drew the dead.
Ignoring the heavy steel door in the front, Andrea led them to the back of the property. Kell gripped the haft of his spear tightly, looking for threats in the evergreens blanketing the rear. Andrea opened a door set in a wooden fence and peered around the small yard before approaching the cement steps leading to the back entrance.
There was a small gap between the back of the stoop and the foundation, barely wide enough to fit a hand in. Andrea reached in nearly to the elbow, digging around u
ntil she stood triumphantly. Kell expected a key, but got a slim card something like you got in hotel rooms.
“The guy that owned this place was kind of paranoid,” she explained. “He taped this to the back of the stoop and told me about it once I'd stayed here a few times. We kind of had a thing.”
The card had slots cut out of it, which puzzled him until Andrea slid it into a narrow box set in the door itself. She raked the card forward quickly, back slowly, followed by a heavy click. The door popped inward half an inch, Andrea pushing it all the way open.
Inside was an office, looking as though the owner had just run out for lunch. Papers were piled on the desk, a coat still hung on a peg near a coffeepot. There was a stale smell to the place, like old clothes not worn in ages.
“Where are we, mommy?” Michelle asked. Evan was looking around curiously, hands nearly still at his sides.
Andrea smiled, putting a hand to her daughter's cheek. “All that time I spent away from you, driving all over the place, I was meeting people. The man who ran this little hotel was one of my friends.” She looked at Kell. “He was a prepper, though not a very hardcore one. Kept most of his stuff at home, but told me about a long-term stash here, just in case I ever needed it. I thought he was joking until I took the time to consider the security in this place.”
“Any idea where it's at?” Kell asked. “We should clear the building before anything else to make sure there aren't any zombies here.”
“After two years I doubt any would still be functional, and we'd be able to smell them,” she said, then forestalled his complaint before he could do more than open his mouth. “But you're right. Kids, stay here while we go check the place out. Lock the door until I get back.”
The closing door cut off the thin light coming through the window, leaving Kell and Andrea in the pitch-black hallway together.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Let's go,” she said, clicking her small flashlight into bright life.
Eleven
“Are all the doors closed?” Kell asked.
Andrea grunted as she shouldered the heavy wood out of its frame. It was the third room they'd checked, each empty, and except for the dust looking as though the beds were changed that morning. The place was gigantic in comparison to most houses, but small as hotels went. There were only six rooms on the ground floor, eight on the second.
“Probably,” she said. “Let's hurry. I don't want to leave the kids alone longer than we have to.”
The remaining three rooms were also unlocked and pristine. The heavy door leading upstairs was not, but neither was it closed. Both of them stared silently at the broken frame around the protruding bar of steel jutting from the engaged deadbolt, twinkling harshly in the cone of light.
“Well, that's disturbing,” Kell said. “Someone has been here.”
“Probably the owner,” Andrea replied. “The outer doors weren't damaged, so it had to be someone who worked here. Maybe this happened before things got really bad.”
Kell leaned forward and ran a finger along the door near the handle, then shook his head. “I don't think so. The dust here is thin. This is more recent.”
They ascended the stairs carefully, Kell with his knives held in a fighter's grip—his spear too long and unwieldy for tight spaces—while Andrea held the light and a compact crossbow they'd pulled from the bag in the trunk of the car. It was small enough to dangle from her belt without impeding her movement, not much bigger than a handgun. Kell thought it looked like a toy, but seeing it in her hand made him reassess that opinion.
They moved up each set of steps slowly, pausing at each landing of the twisting, angular spiral to listen. Nothing. No sounds to give away some trapped corpse, and they'd made enough noise to ensure anyone or anything inside would have heard them.
Another door waited, set in the middle of the main landing on the second floor. Kell waited for Andrea to position herself with her weapon aimed squarely at head-height before throwing it open. His first pull came up short, the door sticking hard in the frame. There was movement, but very little, as if it were held closed by a giant rubber band.
“I'm going to brace my foot on the wall to get some leverage,” Kell said. “Make sure you're ready in case something comes out, because I'll have to put the knives up.” Andrea nodded, the hard edges in her face sharpening.
The next pull did it, one massive boot planted on the floor with the other shoving against the wall as his muscles bunched beneath his shirt. A thin and dry cracking sound accompanied the corded veins as they popped from his wrists, the door opening with a sudden ease which threw him off balance.
Catching himself, Kell took a deep and involuntary breath just as a flood of air from beyond the door washed over him. Two years living in a waking nightmare, smelling the death of the world and even dousing himself with it, didn't prepare him for the stench that assaulted his senses. Rational Kell, in his panic not to vomit the meager breakfast he'd taken from their rations, wondered if this was what if felt like for the undead.
It was the stench of death magnified and concentrated, mixed with notes of human waste in a hundred stages from fresh to dried and ancient. In contrast to the nasal rampage the hallway committed on Andrea and Kell, the hall itself was bathed in light. Every door stood open, and though the day was cloudy, the difference between the meager illumination from Andrea's flashlight and the early-spring sun couldn't have been more drastic.
“Wait,” Kell said. “Weren't those windows shuttered when we pulled up?”
A gurgling screech filled the hallway, the pounding of feet, and then a beast was on them.
The harsh twang of the crossbow barely registered as Kell lashed out with a heavy boot, smashing his injured foot against the shape hurtling through the doorway. He was unlucky; the kick caught an arm and barely threw the attacker off balance, while he himself fell back against the railing. The wood creaked as his heavy frame tested its strength.
A piercing shriek followed, the filthy creature clawing at the small bolt sticking out of its neck, the point erupting a solid two inches through the other side. It yanked the tiny arrow out, followed by a gout of hot blood pumping in a steady arc onto the floor. The blood pooled around Kell's boots as he stared in dumb fascination as the man slumped to his knees and fell on his face.
“Oh, Jesus,” Andrea said. “That's Mike. The owner. He's alive.”
Not for long. He didn't share the thought out loud, but the bolt must have sheared the jugular on the first pass, not to mention the damage done by Mike's instinctive removal of the weapon.
Kell thought she might kneel next to the dying man, to offer an old friend and lover comfort in his last seconds. She did not, instead quickly reloading her crossbow and pulling the slide back to lock the string. They waited, watching the man's life drain out of him.
It didn't take long for Mike to lose consciousness, for his breathing to slow along with the strength and volume of blood arcing from his wound.
With a last feeble dribble, the flow of blood stopped. Andrea stared at the dead man for a few seconds, during which Kell pulled his knife. He stepped forward, turned Mike's head away from Andrea and, shielding her from the sight with his body, drove the point of his blade through the thin bone of the dead man's temple.
When he stood, Andrea was staring at him incredulously.
“He would have come back,” Kell explained. “Zombies don't need blood to function.”
They moved through the hallway beyond, seemingly into a different world than the preserved level just a few feet below. Here every room was washed in light, but filled with filth. One room contained the remains of animals, mostly bones and skin, crammed in so tight Kell couldn't have walked from one side of the room to the other if he wanted to. All of the rooms smelled of human waste, the bathrooms long since overrun with it. Months of living in a closed system left Mike with few options. Though if he were hunting as the carcasses suggested, why hadn't he removed his own waste when leaving
?
“He didn't want to attract the dead,” Andrea muttered, and Kell realized he said the last bit out loud. “I bet if we look around outside we'll find zombie guts or something hidden around. Probably wanted to mask the smell of all this,” she said, gesturing around.
Bags of cat litter lined the hallway, most empty or partially used. “Clever of him to use that,” Kell said, pointing. “But it only goes so far. Do you think there's anything here we can use? Or that you would want to use? It's pretty disgusting and from a sanitary point of view this whole floor is one huge biohazard.”
“I was hoping to find some MREs here,” Andrea said. “Mike bought a ton of them from a surplus depot. And maybe some gas, I know he stocked up on it. That way we could keep driving.”
Kell winced. “That wouldn't have worked,” he said.
Andrea's frowned. “Why not? I thought it was a good idea.”
Putting up his hands, he nodded. “I know, and it really was good thinking. But the gas we're using is new. There's a place we—that is, North Jackson—trades with. They refine it. It's fresh. Anything Mike has is going to be too old to use, most likely. Even if it's treated, it probably wouldn't work.”
Andrea was crestfallen. “Fuck. You mean we just killed Mike for no reason?”
“No,” Kell said more forcefully than he intended. “No, we killed him because he attacked us. He could have stayed back here and watched, or yelled to us before we opened the door. That's on him, not us.”
To his surprise, she nodded. “Still feel bad about it,” she said.
Taking a deep breath and regretting it, Kell gave her a weak smile. “Me too.”
As it turned out, there were only minimal supplies in the rooms of the second floor. It was Kell who found the hidden cache, and only because he walked into the string hanging from the ceiling, the thin cotton slapping his face.
The Fall (Book 2): Dead Will Rise Page 11
