The Fall: Victim Zero

by Joshua Guess

  The main floor housing Kell's office was empty. Empty as he had never seen it. All the equipment, computers, and files were gone. A worker hauled a plastic bin full of papers into the elevator as Kell stepped out of it, leaving him alone in the room. He stalked toward his office, grim determination pushing him forward. He opened the door with his half-functional left arm.

  Jones was packing up. He turned as the door opened, surprise on his face.

  “McDonald. We heard something happened on your way to--”

  Kell cut him off by raising the pistol and leveling it at Jones. There was a solid six feet between them.

  “McDonald, what the hell are you doing? Get that gun out of my face.”

  Kell's breathing picked up. Agony tore through his chest, a vice pressing in on him from every side. The morning's events finally caught up with him, and the tears poured down his face.

  “I told you what would happen. I told you.”

  Alarm flashed across the agent's face. “Wait...”

  “They could have left,” Kell said, wrenching sobs punctuating the words. “They were going to leave, and they would have been safe.”

  “Oh, god, man, I'm sor--”

  “Don't!” Kell screamed. “Don't fucking apologize! You did this! You made them come back. And now they're...”

  “Jesus, Kell. Both of them?”

  There was genuine pity in his voice. True sadness. Kell even thought there might be sympathy. Unable to speak, he nodded.

  “I know you blame me, but listen, man. I didn't do this. I didn't kill them.”

  Another harsh sob erupted from him. “I know you didn't. You only kept them in harm's way. You didn't kill them. Just like David, I did. My work did.”

  Jones took a breath to say something, and Kell shot him in the mouth.

  I keep what promises I can.

  Goodbye.

  No one came flying up the steps at the sound of the gunshot. The office was on the fourth floor, and Kell doubted there was anyone between him and the ground. The door had been shut, the heavy oak muffling the sound.

  He didn't care about getting caught, not of itself. He only wanted to go one last place before the end. There was an empty trash can lying on its side next to the elevator. Kell hooked a foot into it and righted the container, into which he dropped the gun. After a moment's thought he added the spare magazines. No need for bullets without a gun.

  He took the stairs at a casual pace. There were fewer people in the building than there had been even a few minutes before, and those remaining looked so busy that they didn't pay him the slightest bit of attention. He ambled through the lobby and back into the parking lot, only pausing for a few seconds to take in the scene before making his way toward one of the idling black SUVs.

  Kell climbed in, closed the door, and threw it in gear. Someone yelled for him to stop, the sound dim and distorted through the glass, and he ignored that, too.

  It took him fifteen minutes to reach the access road he was looking for. Apparently the situation in the city had deteriorated so much that no one bothered to follow after him. The thought of what the people in Cincinnati would be dealing with in just a few hours, and after them people all over the world, crossed his mind as he guided the massive vehicle up the steep county road.

  There was nothing he could do for them. He'd tried.

  He came to a stop at the top of a hill. The scene below him was picturesque; the bluff overlooked the city, showing urban sprawl and the spread of nature in equal measure. It was a favorite place of his and Karen's on those rare occasions when they had time to simply enjoy each other.

  Kell left the truck and settled slowly and painfully against the spreading oak tree he'd picnicked under so many times. Below him the city moved, cars flowing across its streets like blood pumping through an artery. Like all large gatherings of people it was akin to a living thing.

  The morning stretched on as he watched. As the lunch rush approached, telltale columns of smoke began to appear, first sporadic and faint but growing in number and size as the morning wore into afternoon. The piercing screech of sirens seemed endless. It was all just noise to him. The city below him was still alive, but he had given it a cancer it couldn't fight off. The least he owed it, just as he'd owed his wife and daughter and even David Markwell, was to keep the last vigil as it died.

  Long before the sun began to fade for the day, Kell heard the sounds coming from the city begin to change. At first it was subtle, so wide and vague he couldn't understand what he was hearing. His mind went over the white noise, thunderously loud but distant, in an effort to find context. It took a few minutes of listening for the light bulb to come on, and when the understanding flashed through him it came with incandescent brightness. Knowing burned.

  It was a sound not unlike what you would hear at a stadium. Kell had rarely watched sports, but he remembered a particular World Cup event one of his roommates had begged him to watch. More than a hundred thousand people crying out passionately for their team or against the other, a monstrous roar homogenized and filtered into a single sound through the magic of TV.

  The sound coming from the city was raw and unedited. It was higher and less uniform, but that he could hear it from his perch on top of the hill, no matter how faint, was disturbing by itself. Below him, thousands of people screamed, like white noise on an empty channel when the last show was finally over.

  Kell drifted. Exhaustion and too many days with too little sleep began to catch up with him. Even though he knew what the horrifying sound below him was, it still acted like background static; it made him sleepy. Karen had given him a machine that did the same to help him sleep years ago.

  The sudden memory of her reinserted into his thoughts was a serrated blade against his woozy mind. He was awake again in an instant and trying to distract himself. Guilty for fleeing the painful memories, he fell into an old routine. He thought about work.

  His unique mind recalled all the data at once. Not in perfect detail like someone with eidetic memory, but as a map he visualized. Each node on the map was a concept, a gathering of pieces that made up a whole. Kell couldn't recall a time when he didn't think that way, trying to keep as many plates spinning in his brain as possible. It wasn't precisely like thinking about a thousand things at once. It was more like examining one piece of paper while always being aware what the general contents of the book in your other hand were.

  For a while he turned over all the data about David's case in his head but eventually decided there wasn't a point. He wasn't trying to alter a sample of the organism to fight the existing copies installed in one man's body. That time was gone. He set aside his preconceived notions and focused on what he had in front of him—the undead. Walking corpses, moving around like living people and killing everything he had known and loved.

  Kell let his mind relax, drifting just enough below a fully conscious state to not focus on any one fact. The pain in his hand grew dull and the revulsion he felt at the sounds in the city, though they grew louder, faded. He hadn't had any time to study one of the reanimated before everything went south, but he knew more about Chimera than anyone alive. Hundreds of trials and variant strains, thousands of hours of careful research before splicing the first organism into something new guided his thoughts. Experience, he briefly reflected, is incredibly useful even without all the facts.

  He was on the cusp of sleep when something occurred to him, some angle he hadn't considered before because the situation had been completely different. It wasn't a formed concept, but like a forgotten word it was right on the tip of his metaphorical tongue.

  It was close to dusk, the sun streaking across the bottoms of heavy clouds in a dizzying blend of oranges and pinks and purples. Kell was still trying to work out what his subconscious realization was while he enjoyed the patina of sunset across the sky, when he finally fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.

  Later there was darkness. Kell was jolted awake by shouting voices and gunfire, followe
d by a scream so filled with anguish, so soul-crushingly deep, that he wondered how it could have come from a human throat.

  He stood and tried to gain his balance but stumbled as his injured hand tore open again on the rough bark of the tree. That moment of bad footing combined with the instinctive recoil from the pain in his hand saved his life; otherwise the bullet that struck him in the side as well as the one that clipped his neck would have been instantly fatal heart and head shots.

  The pain overwhelmed him immediately. In his muzzy state, just now beginning to recall all the events that had led him to this lonely hilltop, he found he had no urge to fight. The stark terror at waking up suddenly in a strange place had almost worn off when he gave up.

  Kell fell to his knees and lay on the ground. Whatever was coming was coming. Why fight it?

  To his surprise, the pain didn't stop the desperately sleepy feeling from trying to overtake him.

  “Then again,” he said to himself. “There's a lot of blood coming from my neck.”

  Maybe I'm dying, bleeding out.

  He was okay with that.

  Chapter Eight

  There were bits and pieces, flashes of things that could have been real or complete fabrications on his part. Kell remembered talking to Karen, his wife explaining to him the function of several crucial structures within the Chimera organism. He tried to remember why those structures mattered so much, since they existed on the exterior of the cell membrane and had little to do with how dangerous the thing was.

  Jennifer cooed at him as he smiled at her. Sometimes it was pleasant, just them together at the park or at home. Funny faces and delighted response, though of course she was too young for that.

  Other times it was a nightmare, as that last pitiful shriek bubbled wetly from her throat. He wept in great wracking sobs every time, screaming her name until his throat gave out.

  Sometimes there was a strange white man he had never met, big and bent and maned with snowy hair. The man seemed kind; deep concern etched his walnut-colored eyes, though now and then confusion knitted his brows together.

  Mostly there was thirst and heat and sweating. Kell only came up for breath once in a great while and never fully to the surface, but he remembered those things. Hot flesh all over and a mouth that envied deserts, all laced with blazing wires of agony running down his neck only to branch out to touch his arm and side.

  Pain, discomfort, sickness, all wrapped around him with a blanket made of fire. Contrasted with the pleasant memories, which he knew were reminders of his sins rather than the comfort he took them as, Kell realized in a single lucid moment and with stone-cold practicality that he was in hell.

  There was a hand over his mouth.

  Kell's eyes opened. He came to slowly, assimilating the world around him with cautious observation. If what he was experiencing was as bad as it looked, then he was in trouble and panic would only make it worse. If he was misunderstanding what was happening around him, his reaction could turn a moderate situation bad in a heartbeat.

  Still, he kind of wished the lady would stop pointing the shotgun at his face.

  His eyes traced up the hand covering his mouth, the pressure of it gentle but firm. There was gray hair on the back of that hand, the fingers long and seemingly delicate, but Kell felt the strength in them. The arm was covered in faded but serviceable red flannel, and it connected to the old man he'd seen in his dreams.

  The man with the halo of white hair sat next to him, gaze assessing what he saw.

  “You've got to keep quiet, son. You were building up a good scream there. You been doing that a lot.”

  Kell glanced at the woman holding the gun on him. She lacked the old man's kind expression, her face tense and hard. The man noticed Kell looking, and nodded at the woman. “It's fine, Paulie. You can relax.”

  The woman—Paulie—didn't lower the weapon at first. She gave Kell a searching look and slowly backed out of arm's reach before finally letting the barrel of the weapon point at the floor.

  “Now, I'm gonna take my hand away from your mouth,” the old man said. “I need you to promise not to scream, or you could attract some attention we'd rather not have. If you're in your right mind, nod at me. And if you're doing better than you were a day ago, you'll be able to control yourself. So listen to me, son; don't even try to talk. You're dehydrated and been screaming your head off. Throat probably feels like broken glass. Okay? You got all that?”

  Kell nodded, and the old man took his hand away.

  “Good,” the man said. “Don't know if you recall or not, but my name's Alan. Alan Spence. Do you remember me?”

  Kell shook his head. He spied a glass of water on a table next to him and reached over his body with his right hand to pick it up.

  Except, he didn't.

  He glanced down at himself to see he was chained and tied to the cot beneath him. Long handcuffs, padded with raw leather, kept his arms from traveling more than a foot. Heavy straps across his chest, waist, thighs, and knees snaked over his blanket and secured him firmly. The synapses located in his fear response center snapped from zero percent power to maximum overload in an instant, forcing chemicals to flood his system in a glandular dance that amped his heart rate and muscular reactions up to eleven.

  Kell let the sensation of total lucidity grip him, the hyper-awareness of his situation drenched in abject terror.

  Then he took in the rest of the room, and things began to make some sense.

  There were medical supplies all around the place. The cabinets, padlocked but with clear glass fronts, held giant bottles that looked like pill containers. Below the counter opposite Kell's had labels across the edge, obviously marking the contents on the shelves below. Gauze, sponges, all the goodies.

  Kell tried to work up some saliva to swallow, but there was nothing. Alan tipped the cup of water up to Kell's mouth.

  “You're a doctor,” Kell rasped.

  Alan gave him another drink. “Veterinarian, technically, but really I'm a horse doctor.”

  Kell gave him a quizzical look. Alan smiled.

  “Haven't taken care of anything but horses for almost thirty years now,” the older man clarified. “Got rich doing it down in Kentucky, taking care of thoroughbreds. Retired up this way a few years back. Well, I say I've only healed up horses, but then there's you.”

  Kell took a deep breath, feeling slightly better than death now that there was a little moisture in him. “What happened?”

  Alan sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Now that's an interesting question, isn't it? I wonder if you're asking about yourself, or the city, or even the rest of the country?”

  Memories flooded back to Kell, but he gave no sign how that question hammered at his heart. “Let's start with the country and work backward.”

  Alan's expression grew distant. “It was eight days ago the trouble started. Guess you know that since we found you on that hill overlooking the city. Reckon you ran from whatever was happening there.”

  Kell gasped. “Eight days? I've been out for more than a week?”

  Alan nodded. “Yep, and you're lucky to be having this conversation with me rather than Saint Peter. Things have gone to shit all over the place. Power failures left and right, big cities being evacuated. Announcements on the radio that utilities are gonna start falling apart like dominoes, one place after another. Martial law got declared a couple places a few days ago, but doesn't seem to have done any good. People are scared and stampeding away from those things. The US basically doesn't exist as a country any more, though lot of folks'll tell you otherwise.”

  “Jesus,” Kell said. “So fast.”

  “As for the city, well, Cincinnati was hit harder than most. Probably because it was first.” Alan scrubbed a hand across his nose. “Lot of other places had time to set up barricades and bring in soldiers, time to get some people out. Here, it was just mayhem all day. No response that mattered. Heard one fella say half the population died on just the first day. A
lmost a hundred and fifty thousand people.”

  Alan became grim. “I don't doubt that's true. Those things are hard to kill. Vicious. And seems to be if you die, you become one of them. Been a long time since college, but I remember how fast diseases spread when they're in ideal conditions. This isn't much different. One infects another, both get one more each, and soon you've got more than you can count. Geometric progression, it's called.”

  “Cinci,” Kell said. “Is there anyone left there?”

  “Might be survivors. Lot of folks took the bridge over to Florence, few of them even tried to blow it up behind them, though the thing didn't get much more than smoke-stained. But in the city itself? I doubt it. Place is a warren. Dead people like rats just waiting for a meal.”

  Kell closed his eyes for a second, grief welling up inside him. His parents, friends, every person he knew from his everyday life. Gone. Probably in less than two days.

  “As for you,” Alan said. “Paulie and I have been taking care of you since that first day. Least we could do, since I kind of shot you a few times.”

  Kell laughed, which irritated his throat and sent him into a coughing fit. “You say that like you're talking about the weather.”

  Alan grinned. Behind him, Paulie watched them without expression. The old man shrugged and pulled a key from his pocket. As he started to unlock Kell's handcuffs, he explained.

  “Some of those things--”

  “They're zombies,” Kell cut in.

  Alan grimaced. “Really? I know they're dead, they fit the definition, but it seems so...childish. Stupid. Unreal, you know?”

  “Dead people are getting back up and trying to eat the living, man. I can't think of a better definition for what they are.”

  Alan rolled his shoulders. “If you say so. Anyway, couple of them wandered up this way. Your hill, the one you parked on, is actually the edge of my land. Property ends at the road under it.”