Everyone in the car agreed, and Kate rolled the windows up. It was strange to be the follower, more so to be talked to like a rookie with no experience to speak of. It didn't bother him as much as disturb him. The scouts were confident and versed in the route they were about to take, yet they appeared tense, even worried.
The interstate toward Louisville could have existed in the old world except for the tall brown grass. The small communities of ten or fifteen people scattered through the area had cleaned the road bare of cars and debris. It was only when they approached the city itself that Kell began to understand how different this part of the country was. Cincinnati had been bad, packed with the undead and nearly impassable in areas. Louisville was magnitudes worse.
The interstate hugged the river, carrying them over the destruction. The damage was breathtaking, impossible to look away from. Where Cincinnati was overgrown, areas burned until buildings were husks, Louisville looked like a war zone in the truest sense. Tall buildings bore the unmistakable signs of explosions, great scoops of glass, metal, and stone missing from their facades. One of the taller structures was collapsed, thousands of panes of glass shattered in a glittering halo around countless tons of concrete and twisted I-beams.
Zombies swarmed on the streets below, teeming masses following the surface roads. Further back they'd passed barriers, piles of cars and fallen trees keeping the majority of the undead from reaching the highway. Part of their briefing for the trip involved an overview of migration patterns. This was as late as they could possibly leave; the season for swarms was beginning. Louisville was the gateway many roving zombies used to reach New Haven, attracted by the constant activity as traders moved through. The smell of exhaust and human beings left a trail leading right to their doorstep.
Kell tried to estimate the effort it had taken to clear these roads and build the barriers. The sheer number of dead wandering below was mind-boggling, and those were just what he could see from the back seat of the SUV.
Around a bend in the road, they saw the remains of a military blockade. It spread across what looked like a park, the tattered remains of green tents flapping in the breeze. Most of it had been picked clean by survivors, but while there were no vehicles or other hardware, the collapsible roadblocks and barriers made its size obvious. There must have been artillery at some point.
A dark part of him hoped whoever used it on the city hadn't lived to brag about it.
Long hours passed. They had to take a less direct route, continuing through Kentucky rather than cutting through Indiana in Louisville. The bridges were already packed with zombies this time of year, requiring them to travel on to Henderson before cutting north. It was all part of the carefully designed itinerary, which Kell had agreed to easily. This wasn't his neck of the woods, after all.
But the boredom.
He expected to stop sometime in the afternoon. Tough or not, the women riding in front of them had to eat. They didn't, everyone in the SUV eating on the go. Further along the northern boundary of the state, down less frequented roads, the way grew more cluttered. Here there were no people working to clear the way. At times their speed slowed to a crawl, and once they had to stop to push several vehicles off the road in order to move forward.
It was evening before they finally came to a halt longer than a few minutes. Nicole veered onto an exit ramp, the rest following. A mile from the highway, tucked behind a service station, sat a disguised set of barrels full of fresh gasoline. It was good—their extended tank was dry, drained into the main tank and even that mostly gone. Doing some math, he guessed they would need at least another of these refuel stops before hitting their goal.
Iowa. A stone's throw in practical terms, only seven hundred miles. Not even five percent of the planet's circumference. The distance was unimportant. The dread slowly adding to itself in his gut, layer upon layer, wasn't fear of what they'd face in their travels. It was knowing that, short of death, he would have to confront the old life he'd spent the last two years trying to forget, to face the responsibilities he'd abandoned when Karen and Jennifer died.
For all that the trip was meant to give him the tools to begin fixing the mess the human race found itself in, it felt like a death march. Kell was John Coffee walking the Green Mile. Only he didn't have Coffee's easy grasp on his own innocence. No matter what Andrea or anyone else said, the plague truly was on him to some degree. Every mile brought him closer to the moment when he would have to stare that monster in the face.
Nicole, Juel, and Emilia topped off their tanks as Kate did the same. Each of the scouts snacked as they waited to fill up, chasing their scant meals down with several pills. Kate motioned for Juel to come over, the women standing together just behind Kell's open window.
“Are we camping here, or do we need to pull a little further from the road?” Kate asked.
Juel blinked. “Camp? No, we're not stopping yet.”
“We've been on the road all day,” Kell said, poking his head out the window. “We can switch drivers, but you three—”
“Are used to going for fourteen to sixteen hours in an emergency,” Juel said. “And guess what? It's always an emergency. We'll stop in northern Missouri. There's a nice spot we've been working on for the last few months, a campground the scouts and traders can use as a safe haven. We'll sleep there.”
Kell was about to protest when Kate leaned down. “You want to drive for a while? My ass is cramped, I don't think I can manage another minute.”
“I'll do it,” Chris said. “I napped for like five hours.”
“We didn't notice,” Scotty said.
“Really?” Chris asked.
Scotty rolled his eyes. “No, not really. You snore like an old chainsaw.”
In only a handful of minutes they were on the road again, lights cutting through the unnaturally dark night—which when you think about it is wrong, it's the only truly natural darkness in centuries—and trundling quietly across the pavement once again. Kate had reset the trip odometer before they'd left, and after a full day of driving they were barely halfway. As much as he wasn't looking forward to seeing the fallback research facility he'd avoided—by murdering the agent who ordered him to go—he was also glad to be moving. Human beings were hardwired for nervousness and tension when traveling new ground. Survival demanded it.
Unfortunately, they only made it five miles before having to stop again.
Cresting a hill, their headlights scattered over the bodies of dozens of people. The nearest was only a few yards away, and it was fresh. No signs of rot, at least. In the wash of light, nearly as many zombies could be seen crouching down, some on hands and knees, tearing chunks of flesh away. Some looked up at the newcomers while others remained as they were, heads buried in their victims, gnashing with abandon.
“Son of a bitch,” Chris whispered.
Juel and Emilia dismounted their bikes almost in unison, drawing heavy machetes and pulling their helmets off. Even before Nicole waved for them to join the fight, Kell was unbuckling his seat belt and pulling the door handle. His first instinct was to reach for the spear, but Scotty thrust one of the heavy, custom machetes at him—manufactured in North Jackson, funnily enough—along with one of the octagonal shields. The ground was too littered with corpses to allow for much in the way of coordination, but their movement would be limited to the reach of the headlights.
The dead seemed reluctant to leave their meals, mostly ignoring the living people staring down the hill at them.
“Nicole, they don't look like they want to come after us,” Kell said. “Why not just drop some ammonia and drive through? You said we don't want to fight.”
Pulling her own helmet off, Nicole shook her head. “No way around. This road leads to a bridge, the only one in a hundred miles that takes us over the creek. And it's a big creek. Someone took out all the other bridges.” She pointed her blade past the feasting ghouls. “This many dead, there's probably a vehicle we can't see. Might be across the road, might n
ot, but these bodies came from somewhere. Do you want to drive through without fighting only to hit a roadblock and have all these zombies trapping us there?”
Kell shook his head.
“Glad you agree,” Nicole said. “Maybe next time you'll take me at my word without the walk through, yeah?”
“Uh, sure. Sorry.”
Nicole nodded. “Let's do it, then. Three units. Me, Juel, and Emilia in front. K and Scotty to our right, Kate and Chris to the left. Stay close enough to keep stragglers from our backs, far enough you don't hit us with your swings. Remember, keep the shield up and swing down if you can. Otherwise use your own judgment.”
She dipped a hand into her pouch, pulled a familiar sphere from it, and threw. The distant sound of breaking glass was followed by the grating shuffle of feet. Like the bow wave of a ship, zombies moved away from their meals to avoid the painful smell of the ammonia grenade.
Though all three scouts wore heavy leather coats with thick armor on the forearms, none carried shields. They had them—their motorcycles had a slot next to the rear wheel to store them—but apparently this threat wasn't bad enough to warrant their use.
Kell thought it a dangerously vain decision until the first zombie reached Nicole. The tall woman put her forearm out, allowing the ghoul to grab it with seeking claws. With perfect timing, she spun the weapon up and over, a short arc carrying it cleanly down atop the zombie's skull.
The head split down to eye level. She pulled sharply back as the zombie fell, weighted blade screeching against bone as it came free. Nicole moved easily, almost casually.
“Here they come,” she said, bracing herself. Kell did the same.
The scouts read the battlefield well; the scattered bodies kept the oncoming swarm from moving quickly or in groups. They came in small clusters, and it wasn't until the fourth such group that Kell had to do more than watch.
Juel to his left, Scotty to his right, two undead shambled wide around to come straight at him. The urge to move forward and into the fray was strong, fed by years of doing the work on his own. Instead, he brought the shield up hard and fast, slamming the thin metal into the zombie's hands. The timing of his swing was off, blade coming down to skitter across the side of the zombie's face. The thing had no reaction to losing its ear and most of the flesh from the cheekbone back. It pushed on his shield, forcing him to stagger back a step.
The second zombie tried to move in, but Scotty took it from the side. His blade didn't miss, weighted blade making easy work. Kell couldn't quite shake his own attacker, who had hooked his fingers over the top edge of his shield and held on with enough force to bow the metal. After several seconds of trying—and warning Scotty off from any attempt to help, afraid he'd stumble into the path of his friend's weapon—Kell tried a new tactic.
Instead of pushing, he pulled, down and toward himself. It was risky, as the bottom edge of the shield was sharpened, but the pull did the job; the zombie was yanked forward. Kell used his reach well, whipping the machete upward, wide point exploding into the soft underside of its jaw. It took a slight wiggle to get the blade in, then he pushed again, straightened his arm, and changed the direction of the blow.
The machete twisted and switched from vertical to horizontal as it sheared flesh, slipping between the vertebrae. The zombie dropped, nearly ripping the handle from his fingers. It would have, had he not slipped the attached nylon cord around his wrist.
Glimmers of artificial light danced as they fought, blades rising and falling in fluid rhythm. Just as it was on the staircase of an abandoned motel—it seemed forever ago to him—the act of killing was self-reinforcing. Every body on the ground before them made adding to the total easier. The next zombie coming at Kell tripped over the body of the last two. This time Kell ducked and raised the shield at an angle, absorbing much of the impact and stopping the momentum of the falling body long enough for Scotty to step in and carefully strike.
“Back up!” Nicole shouted. “New Breed!”
Kell looked on in horror as several small groups of zombies came in from the sides of the road, appearing like ghosts from the shadowed treeline. They had avoided the tangle of corpses by ignoring them completely, an act Kell would have called impossible six months before.
Three of them pushed between Kell and Juel, forcing him and Scotty to break backward and to the outside of the SUV, away from the rest of the group. Everyone else managed to form a tight circle, all facing outward, as another seven or eight New Breed slowly moved around them. Kell saw the intelligence in those dead eyes, the stalking brilliance of a hungry wolf. They watched, analyzed.
Then the closest New Breed lunged at him, forcing Kell to jump back several feet. The SUV was directly to his left, obscuring his view of the rest of the group. Scotty drifted to the right, making room as the three enemies moved in for the kill.
Screaming wordlessly, Scotty surged forward, catching the lead enemy by surprise as he bashed it in the face with his shield in an upward swing. The thing didn't like that at all, a rictus of pain on its face as it tried to fend off the attack with its hands.
Its fingers caught the bottom of the shield as Scotty finished his swing, and with a brutal shove the man sliced through every one of them, lodging his shield in the zombie's abdomen. Undeterred, the zombie wrapped its arms around the repurposed stop sign, stumpy hands strong as it pulled Scotty to the ground.
“No!” Kell screamed, trying desperately to find an opening to strike. The straps holding Scotty's shield to his arm kept him from untangling himself, the act made more difficult by the need to avoid the snapping jaws of the enemy only inches from his face. This was complicated somewhat by the other two undead, both trying scramble past the writhing pair on the ground. For the moment they only had eyes for Kell, but as soon as they realized Scotty was easy prey, that would change.
Moving forward, Kell stood astride them. His long legs allowed just enough room to stand over the pair. “Scotty, push!” Kell said. Thankfully the command was enough; Scotty shoved hard, pushing himself away to give Kell room to work. Tangled as he was, there was no way for the other man to bring his own weapon to bear.
Kell bent at the waist and slid his blade across the throat of the zombie beneath his friend. Without being told, Scotty threw his weight forward, shield slamming into the machete. The blade drove through the neck and into the earth below, torn from Kell's fingers. The force of it shifted his balance to the front foot, and rather than fall bonelessly, he pushed off and turned the momentum into a forward roll.
Though complicated by his shield, Kell came up swinging, bashing his shield into the closest zombie. He hit harder than intended, the forearm strap breaking completely off. As the ghoul staggered back, the sheet of metal flapped like a wing, the hand strap the only thing keeping it from flying away.
Cursing, Kell shook off the shield, useless now that he could barely hold onto it. Fear sent his heart racing; two undead before him and no weapons. New Breed, at that. There would be no simple misdirection to fool them while he took advantage.
The pair came at him in a coordinated attack. As much as they could in the space available, they hit him from two sides. Fingers tore at his right wrist as he blocked with it, the zombie's jaws clamping down on the sleeve of his coat. The dry snapping of splintered teeth followed; someone had learned about the hard plastic disks sewn into the lining.
Kell's left hand was twisted up in the tattered remains of a shirt and tie, fist hard against the other zombie's neck. The position gave him no leverage to work with, but did make it impossible for the thing to do more than claw ineffectively at his armored coat. He was staring in its eyes when the zombie on his right let go of him completely.
Startled, Kell shifted his attention, which was when the second zombie grabbed his arm tight and dropped. He managed to keep a death grip on the thing's necktie as it took him to the ground, a conscious effort, but throwing his free arm over his face was luck with a dash of instinct. Good instinct; a moment la
ter the first zombie was on him again, this time in a better position. Only the coat kept him from being mauled in a heartbeat, and even that wouldn't last. Sooner or later one of the attacks would slip through and get his face, and he would lose an eye or worse.
Panic went from the careful inspiration for survival he'd always used it as to full-blown alarm bells clanging against the inside of his skull. If he let go of the one he held, it would attack him. Maybe Scotty. But without both arms, he didn't stand a chance against the other.
And the damn things were strong. Held tight by the neck, the zombie had its entire body to work through. It had learned it couldn't tear through the heavy fabric of the coat or the overlapping plastic scales beneath, so it began to beat on his arm, slamming fists into his muscles with brutal power. The strength of it amazed him as much as the calculation behind the move. The zombie was light-years beyond its less intelligent brethren.
Kell finally managed to get a grip on the shirt of the zombie snapping at his face. His elbow lashed out, not trying to throw the thing so much as trap his bent arm against it to hold it still. It was like fighting a tornado, and cost him; a blinding flash of pain seared up his neck and across the lower part of his jaw, warm wetness coursing down. The smell of fresh blood sent both zombies into a frenzy, redoubling their struggle.
Risking his eyes, Kell glanced at the ravening zombie atop him. With a silent prayer he pushed with everything he had, rocking the beast back. As it lunged his fingers found its throat, digging in the stiff flesh with vice-like strength. He felt tissue give way, crunching and collapsing, and for a few seconds he managed to hold the damn thing still.
Heedless of the damage, the zombie pushed forward, claws raking the sleeve of Kell's coat. Ravaged, dead hands gripped the fabric, pulling the zombie tighter against his grip. Its fingers crept closer to his face, as inexorable as the rising tide. His muscles burned, arms going numb, but from a deeper well of strength than he knew existed, Kell flexed.
The Fall (Book 2): Dead Will Rise Page 20
