The Fall: Victim Zero

by Joshua Guess

  Even then the blast was enough to nearly make him piss his pants.

  Gunfire erupted instantly.

  Chapter Twenty

  Worming his way across the ground, Kell took shelter behind a tree. A small, strange part of him felt slightly bad for lying; the tanks in the back of the truck held no deadly gases. Just propane. Which, as he thought about it, really was a deadly gas given the circumstances. Twitching his head around the trunk of the tree, he guessed all six tanks went up when the explosives triggered based on the destruction. A pang of guilt struck him. It had been a good truck.

  Perfectly timed, the teams fired from the edge of the ridges making up the valley. Kell saw the muzzles of their rifles flash in a steady rhythm as the burning chaos below spread. From his vantage there was only a small section of the camp visible, and that was all in flames. As he watched, a man on fire ran from the conflagration, shrieking in terrified pain as the fat beneath his charred skin combusted in a self-sustaining chemical dance.

  With a deep breath, Kell raced from his hiding spot. Long strides ate up the yards as he dashed forward. Twin knives slid from the sheaths hidden beneath the back of his coat. As he edged around the side of the hill toward the main gate of the camp, he wondered if anyone was left inside for him to deal with.

  Another burst of gunfire answered his question. The blast and ensuing blaze were never meant to be the only solution to the marauder problem. Too small, and it wouldn't have injured or killed enough of them. Too large, and the people hiding on the edges of the hills might have been injured before their first shot was fired.

  The surviving marauders were firing wildly into the air. The smoke boiling above him occasionally darted forward in a line as a bullet erupted from it, leaving a thin contrail behind. That was a small blessing; the smoke had to make it nearly impossible for the marauders to aim properly or to even see their attackers well, while the brightness of the flames outlined them perfectly for Laura and Kate's teams.

  The odds were still stacked heavily against Kell's people, however. In less than a minute he heard the signal to pull back toward the town, the loud screech of an athletic whistle cutting through the screams of dying and angry men.

  The valley itself was fairly small, and it took little time for the closest team to reach Kell's position. He nodded to them as they passed, eyes twitching nervously toward the still-burning entrance to the camp.

  “Trap's sprung,” the last of them, a woman named Rebecca Graham, said. “Come on. We've only got a minute or two before all hell breaks loose here.”

  Kell raised an eyebrow. “Looks pretty hellish to me.”

  The startled screams of men cut the air. “That'll be the zombies we let loose at the top of the hill,” Rebecca said. “We really need to go.” She motioned down the hill where the rest of Laura's team hustled toward the town with their guns held ready.

  Kell shook his head. “I'm waiting for Kate's team to show. You head out. I'll be right behind.”

  Neither of them heard the man climbing the hill next to them. It was a complete surprise when his body dropped on Kell like a cartoon anvil, driving him to the earth.

  Sheer luck kept the knives from piercing his own flesh, his arms thrown out to catch his weight as the attacker pummeled him. The smell of burned skin was overwhelming as Kell slithered around beneath the man, trying ineffectually to drag his blade across something vital.

  The attacker's face was a smoking ruin, one eye boiled in its socket, that entire half of his head scorched to the bone. The remaining half was a stark contrast, healthy and wild with pain as he drove fists into Kell over and over.

  Rebecca drove the butt of her rifle into the man's throat with a grunt of effort, then as he fell forward dipped her hand to the ground and snatched Kell's fallen blade before jamming it in the attacker's eye. It was done so easily and smoothly Kell scarcely had time to understand what was happening before it was over.

  “We're leaving,” Rebecca said.

  Kell nodded, springing to his feet and following after her.

  If all had gone as planned, the zombies they'd penned up above should drive the surviving marauders down the hill. The plan was like any other—only good until the moment of first contact. Then fate and chance and human error took control, and all you could do was hope.

  Kell glanced over his shoulder often, looking for Kate and her group as well as making sure no one was aiming a rifle at his back. Dim outlines of men cresting the hills on either side of the valley confirmed there were enough survivors to make problems, but that was expected.

  From somewhere to Kell's left a woman shouted in rage, followed by a burst of gunfire. The sound came from closer to the escaping marauders than Kell's own position. It had to be Kate's group, who had the unenviable task of drawing the enemy toward the town.

  Given the destruction and loss of life, it didn't seem too hard a job.

  The sounds of struggle and death faded as they ran for the vehicles they'd hidden below the camp. Rebecca peeled away from him and headed for the closest, Laura behind the wheel. Kell waved for her to go as he moved toward his own bundle of gear lying mostly hidden beneath a pile of pine boughs.

  “Come on!” Laura said urgently. “You don't need to stay out here.”

  “It's part of the plan,” he replied. “I'll be fine.”

  No time to argue, she slammed the truck in gear and drove as he quickly threw on his cloak, the tattered fabric altered to better blend in with the bare woods in winter. Another burst of gunfire and curses gave him an idea of how far off Kate and her team were, forcing Kell to speed up his preparations.

  Quiver at his side, bow in hand, and spear strapped across his back, Kell lengthened his stride and ran at full speed. He crested one of the many small hills leading down into town and reoriented himself to the familiar landmarks. He'd come out roughly where the plan called for him to be; his chosen spot was only a dozen yards away.

  Slipping the earpiece for his two-way radio in, he made for his perch. The tree was perfect, sheltered by other trees but leaving him a plain line of sight. He would be the eyes on the marauders as they made their way into the town. If they followed. Which, by the sounds of it, was happening even as he settled in.

  The wait wasn't long in time elapsed, but it felt like years.

  “Jailbirds are secure,” the crackling voice said over the two-way. “Rickwalder heading back to fallback location.”

  “Copy that, Dan. Back door is open for you,” the reply came.

  Below him came the last of the vehicles, a Cherokee carrying Kate and two of her teammates. Bullets ricocheted from the heavy steel plate covering the back of the Jeep as Kate tore through the ice and muck in a mad bid to reach her own fallback location. Fifty yards behind, Kell saw a group of marauders chasing on foot, guns spitting in a constant racket.

  “Last group incoming,” Kell murmured into the mic at his throat. “Marauders following. Two minutes or so.”

  Limbs wrapped around the trunk of his tree and hidden in the deep shadows of the needle-rich limbs, Kell didn't worry about being seen. Most of him was on the far side of the tree, after all, and the dark around him was more than enough cover to keep him unnoticed.

  Then again, if they did see him he was screwed, so why worry?

  The marauders came in disconcertingly organized groups; there were three small bands of five each on foot, watching for signs of an ambush, and ten more piled into a pickup. A few were obviously injured, and one was coughing so badly Kell was certain his lungs had been burned by the superheated air, but for the most part they were mobile. Even at a distance he could see the driving anger in the way they moved.

  His hand clicked a button on his radio twenty-five times. Laura, Kate, and everyone else with a radio would hear the groupings of the clicks and understand that they represented numbers. Twenty-five was more than they had planned on, but a damn sight better than sixty or more.

  The marauders stopped thirty feet from his tree, an
d Kell barely allowed himself to breathe as he waited. The urge to drop from his perch and take a chance by running was best expressed by a grinding pressure in his bladder, but he resisted. Both the urge to run and the need to piss himself for a second time in twenty minutes. The idea that Laura and Kate would make fun of him for the rest of his days for it was somehow more powerful than the threat of death itself.

  After a tense wait, the marauders moved forward. The tracks left by the Jeep were clear enough, and as the last of them moved from his line of sight Kell keyed his mic and spoke softly.

  “You've got incoming. Three groups of five, one group of ten in a truck. I'm counting to thirty then heading in,” he said.

  “Understood,” Laura said, then swore. “We didn't expect this many. Watch your ass.”

  Kell chuckled. “Me? I'm planning on hiding somewhere. Probably won't even get to fight.”

  Thirty seconds later he was threading his way down the tree and into the woods. The area was dense with trees, which made his descent into the outskirts easy enough. The long stretch of open land between the treeline and the nearest building was the riskiest part of the plan for him, but the marauders had moved into the town proper by the time his tired legs reached the pavement.

  He ran behind buildings, keeping to the edges and glancing through alleys. A constant patter of updates played in his ear, alerting him to the location of the enemy. Kell kept a map of the place in his head, sketchy but good enough.

  The ability to quickly memorize a lot of data helped him sneak up on the first of them, a pair of men who had fallen to the far rear of the marauder group. Whether they were playing rear guard or were just undisciplined Kell didn't know. In the end it didn't matter; he reached into the small pouch Laura had given him that morning. Precious cargo, and peering at the two lagging men he couldn't think of a better time to use it.

  Though he lacked talent with firearms, Kell had great aim with a baseball. Grenades aren't so different when you thought about it.

  He didn't waste any time waiting to see the effect. Kell lobbed the thing on the run, down an alley and in front of the men he was stalking on a parallel street. The explosion was powerful enough to make his ears ring, even with a building between him and the blast.

  Kell ran on, listening to updates through his radio and planning his next move.

  “Three just moved in to check for signs of life,” Laura said in his ear. “Another group of five just split off and are heading up the street from the explosion, toward us.”

  “I'm on it,” Kell said into the mic.

  “There are five of them, K,” she said, a note of worry in her voice.

  “Not for long,” he replied.

  He poured on the speed, moving ahead of the group. Laura and her team were set up in a church at the end of the street with its back facing the forest. The place was stout and had a perfect view of every approach. Kell cut over onto the main street two blocks before the church, which put him—according to the voice in his ear—three blocks up from the approaching marauders.

  Crouched next to the porch of a large colonial, Kell watched them draw near. The two on the far end of the line had rifles. The nearest one had no firearm that he could see. The two in the middle carried handguns. All of them scanned the surrounding buildings with the intensity of hunting sharks.

  When they were a block away, Kell grabbed a piece of gravel from the driveway next to him and chucked it at a house across the street. The heavy pock of stone against wood startled the jumpy men, who all reacted without hesitation.

  While they fired at the empty house, Kell rose and loosed an arrow at the nearest of them. None of the five was looking his direction. The unarmed man didn't see the arrow that slammed into his ribs.

  Kell dropped back as soon as the arrow hit, flowing back behind the houses.

  “They didn't see you,” Laura said. “If you're heading south, come around the blue house. One is staying with the injured man. The other three think you hit them from farther up the street.”

  Kell clicked his radio in acknowledgment and followed Laura's advice. From there he lobbed his second and last grenade into the path of the three men before diving behind cover.

  “Oh, very nice,” Laura said after the blast. “Two of them are down. Third lost his weapon.”

  The spear slid easily from his back as Kell dashed forward, bounding from the dirt. The last of the three men was just pulling himself up, obviously dazed, when Kell rammed the spear's point into his ribcage. Bone cracked and sinew parted, the pain so terrible that only a choked squeak escaped before the unlucky man toppled to the pavement in a boneless heap.

  “Down!” a man bellowed. Kell dropped on pure instinct.

  The air above him was torn with the high whiz of bullets. Down the road, the last living member of the group knelt next to the arrow-shot man. His gun clicked empty as Kell watched, then red blossoms appeared on his chest.

  “You okay?” A deep voice asked. Kell looked up to see one of his people striding over.

  The man, Scotty Atkinson, wasn't especially large, but his gun was. The rifle was nearly as tall as Scotty himself, though he held it in one hand as he helped Kell to his feet.

  “I'm fine,” Kell replied. “Thanks for the save.”

  Scotty grinned. “No problem. Let's get inside before more of them show up.”

  The interior of the church was homey bordering on austere. There was no garish art, no signs of wealth. Only subtle earth tones and thick carpeting. It was the kind of place Kell wouldn't have minded taking a long rest in.

  Laura, however, had other plans.

  “Here's the deal,” she said to the group. “We don't have much time. Kate had an idea, and she's already following through. She's going to lead a group of zombies into town. The hope is the marauders will use up whatever ammunition they have on them, which will make our job a lot easier.”

  “You're assuming they'll stick around for that,” Kell said.

  “I've sent Jason out to harass them,” she replied. Jason Craft was the brother of one of the prisoners, and the first to volunteer when they'd put out the call for help. “I'm pretty sure he can keep them interested. Kate already radioed in, and she's got a nice group following her back.”

  “So what do we do?” Scotty asked.

  “We watch,” Laura said. “If they run dry while they're fighting the swarm, we wait. We only start shooting if they run. This isn't about personal vendettas. This is about ending the threat as safely for ourselves as humanly possible.”

  With that they took positions in the high windows of the church and watched the chaos unfold.

  They were fighting in the streets. Whatever Kate's original idea was, the swarm of zombies wasn't aware of it.

  Kell knelt in a narrow alley as he waited to see if the marauder in front of him would win the fight with the ghoul attacking him. In less than two hours the entire town was infested, that first large group of undead brought by Kate attracting more and more of the creatures. In the end the teams all retreated back to the church, where the rescued women still waited.

  Everyone else dove into the fray. It was the only option once the zombies started beating at the windows, to draw them off and keep the captives safe.

  One good thing about the surprise increase in the size of the swarm was the outright panic in the marauders. They'd come loaded for bear, but in a desperate attempt to cut a path through the wall of bodies crashing over them in waves they blew through even their own large stores of ammunition.

  Kell was the last member of his war party still near the church. Being the fallback guy wasn't his idea, but the rest of the team were better shots. Out there hunting down the scattered enemy amid the dead he would be a liability. It chafed, but Laura and Kate knew their business.

  The marauder put down the zombie attacking him by bludgeoning the thing with the butt of his assault rifle. The man's back faced Kell, and he wasn't one to waste an opportunity, reaching the man in three lon
g strides and wrapping his left hand around the jaw while the right slipped in and slashed.

  There were other undead about, but the slope of the streets leading to the church discouraged them. Still, that much blood was going to put the spurs to them. Pulling his cloak tighter and praying the gore spread across it was still fresh enough, Kell melted back into the dark space next to the church.

  He watched dispassionately as the corpse he made was torn to pieces by a group of zombies.

  Voices shouted not far away, too vague to identify. His hand drifted to the ground, tightened into a fist around his spear. The sounds of combat followed, the wet parting of flesh flowing with the hollow crack of breaking bone. Skulls coming apart had a certain resonance, one almost every living person could point out.

  Kell backed up carefully and let his body become a spring. Several zombies appeared in front of the narrow gap, pushed by a gang of men almost to the steps of the church. He didn't recognize any of them, but a familiar voice rang out from the rear.

  Then Lucas stepped into view.

  A few hours could change a person. Half of the older man's face was a blistered mass of reddened skin and singed hair. The air of calm authority was gone, replaced by a wild fierceness as he snarled orders at his men. Lucas fought with abandon, defending the rear of the group by himself while three others took the front.

  Kell chose his moment. Just as Lucas extended himself in a vicious strike against one of the zombies, Kell shot out from his hiding spot, silently praying these men hadn't held any bullets back just in case.

  It was his bad luck that Lucas saw him coming from the corner of his eye, heavy machete changing course mid-swing to knock the tip of Kell's spear aside. The man was old but he moved like water, legs flowing in a smooth circle to put him behind the zombie and pushing the monster directly onto Kell.

  If the tactic was meant to scare him, it failed. The zombie latched onto Kell's right arm and snapped its teeth into his sleeve, but other than a hard swing to break the thing loose he paid no attention to it. The men behind him cried in surprise as he flung the zombie at them before lunging at Lucas again.