The Fall: Victim Zero

by Joshua Guess

  The old man was already swinging his machete, blade whistling through the air as Kell tried to block. He was half-successful; the blade stopped against the spear, but only after biting into Kell's left arm just below the shoulder. The cut hurt like hell. He tried not to think about the damaged chain mail rings digging into the wound as he slid his hip into Lucas.

  To his credit the old man reacted well, moving in the same smooth rhythm that reminded him of all those days spent training with Kate. But the distance was too short, the slope of the street too steep, and Kell was too large and heavy.

  His weight crashed into Lucas, throwing the old man back a few feet and sending him scrambling for footing on the blood-soaked road. The butt of Kell's spear darted out, bursting through Lucas's left eye and crushing the socket.

  It was over that quickly. One thing Kate's lessons taught him was fights never end like they do in the movies.

  Then someone shot him in the back. Which hurt. A lot.

  The strike plate took it but the blossom of agony spreading across his upper back washed away everything else. With the pain came anger. In a split second the dam inside him burst and Kell's world went red.

  He was vaguely aware of Lucas screaming, still alive but gravely injured, as he launched himself at the rest of the group. Kell's spear dipped and weaved, seeking out any vulnerable flesh. One man raised a gun, the fact registering to his overwhelmed brain only as the primary danger, and Kell broke his wrist with a savage downward stroke.

  The gunman dropped his weapon but Kell whipped the spear across his face, tip shredding the man's sinus cavity as it tore a furrow reaching from the edge of his jaw to the opposite temple.

  His weapon lodged there, stuck. Kell let go, pulling a knife and leaping at the next man, who was engaged with a zombie. The blade slipped into his gut easily, angling upward toward the sternum.

  A bright new pain in his side forced him to lash out, whipping his elbow into the face of the last marauder. Kell fell on him, bearing the man to the ground. There was no art to his punches, no clever skill. They twisted against each other, each trying to find a better position. His opponent did something to Kell's injured side, the pain overloading his senses.

  A few seconds later his head began to clear. The last marauder was dead, an unfamiliar knife buried in his throat, Kell's own hand still around the hilt.

  His fingers slowly unclenched as his equilibrium reasserted itself. His side was bleeding, though the armor had stopped some of it, and not for the first time he thanked the universe for the time he'd had to reinforce it with more chain mail. The wound would hold until he got home.

  If I get home.

  The marauders were screaming, except for the one he was still straddling. Lucas rolled on the ground trying to hold his face together. The other man with the ruined face only let out irregular burbling squeaks, each accompanied by a fresh spray of blood. The other was trying to fend off a zombie and shove his guts back in at the same time, with poor results.

  There were only a few undead around, and only the one was trying to attack. The open abdominal wound was too much for its self-control. The other three stood watching, bodies tense.

  Lucas worked himself from his knees to standing, one hand pressed tight to his wounded eye. The nearest zombie backed away from him, its gaze...wary was the best description Kell could think of. It waited for Lucas to make a move, and when the old man lurched away, body bent near in half as he shuffled, the cagey look in the eyes of the last three zombies vanished.

  Smart zombies. Or at least smart enough to take some care for their own safety.

  So it wasn't just one. It's spreading.

  All three of the undead lunged for Lucas as one. Kell didn't wait to see the result; he sprang to his feet and yanked the spear free, spinning to put his back to the church.

  Lucas held his own, burying his machete in the face of one enemy. Another grabbed his arm and pulled it away from his injured face, Lucas responding with a soul-rending howl and headbutting the damn thing right in the face. Kell had to give it to him; the old man was tough.

  Gunshots rang, a short battery of lead, and suddenly every zombie was down.

  So were the injured marauders, except for Lucas. Whoever shot him must have been distracted; the bullet hit his shin. Kell was on him almost before he crumpled to the ground.

  His other knife whispered from its sheath, blade held to the old man's throat as Kell spread his weight on him. Baleful and defiant, Lucas snarled with his remaining eye shining.

  “Go ahead. Fucking kill me.”

  Kell's hand began to shake, then his arm, the tremor traveling up and out until his entire body hummed. There was no fear, no indecisiveness, no hesitation. He wanted to do it. To feel the blood drain from this man. To watch the life flicker and pass from him.

  God, he really wanted it.

  Through all the pain, which was clamoring for his attention louder and louder as the adrenaline wore off, he felt a sliver of fear. He was already a murderer, but the desire he felt was almost too much to handle.

  Instead Kell pressed the knife closer. “I am. I'm going to kill you. But not without telling you why, even though you already know. Because that's the difference between us, Lucas. You kill and steal and rape without ever questioning. You take and fuck everyone who isn't one of yours, right? People like you showed your real selves when the world fell apart. That is why I'm going to kill you. Because you could have picked a spot and tried to build something. Instead all you've done is destroy.”

  Lucas spit a gobbet of blood in Kell's face. “Stop preaching and fucking kill me, nigger! You already took my son. So fuck you. Do it!”

  Kell froze. “Your son?”

  “You know it, you son of a bitch. You killed my Ben, that's how you found us.”

  He couldn't help it; Kell burst into laughter. Lucas screamed and struggled to get free. Kell bore down on him. After a moment's pause he gave Lucas a small nod and slipped the blade through his throat. Bright arterial blood sprayed upward, pattering onto Kell.

  “You have at least thirty seconds, no more than a few minutes,” Kell said. “So I should let you know that Ben is alive for now. He's at my place. I wonder if we could have arranged a trade if I had known he was your son. Funny, really. He didn't give you up as his father.”

  Lucas's eye widened, then began to relax. He was going. Kell leaned down and whispered in his ear.

  “But then maybe he didn't tell us because he wanted you to die. Something to think about.”

  Lucas died, tears rolling down his ruined face.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Bleeding too heavily to blend in among the dead and wary of the intelligent among them who might see through the ruse, Kell radioed for help and stumbled into the church. He called the passphrase out to the captives hiding there but didn't wait for a response.

  Kate and her team showed up within a minute. They had been the ones firing on Kell's enemies, having taken to the rooftops after slaughtering every remaining marauder they could find. Blood loss and pain turned the next hours into a blur, though the pressure of two people sitting on him as someone stabbed his injured side over and over again did get his attention. Stitches, someone said. Someone who kept on stabbing.

  It took three people to bundle him in the back of the van with the rescued women, though Kell had no recollection of the move. The horror of the day and the handful of painkillers someone forced on him created a dull haze where much of that time should have been.

  Though they weren't far away from home as the bird flies, the number of undead attracted by the violence and noise forced the entire group to shelter in an abandoned garage just outside of town for the night. Kell remembered that much; Kate nearly flipped the van outmaneuvering the undead to get inside the place.

  Gradually he came all the way around, and as the group of volunteers fell asleep, he was just waking up.

  Kell rose from his pallet next to the van to find two men on watch—Ti
m Yorty, formerly a Sergeant in the Army Reserves, and Drew Stansbury. Kell had memorized the names of every person who volunteered for the trip, both out of respect for the choice and in case some of them didn't make it. Before the fight he thought knowing their names was enough. Now it seemed a pitiful honor.

  “Gentlemen,” Kell said in a low voice. “How are we doing?”

  Tim glanced up, his eyes serious. “If we're lucky they won't realize we're in here.”

  “I was more wondering how everyone else managed. I sort of lost track of things...”

  Drew smiled, a sunny expression. “We were two of the people holding you down. You must have taken a hit to the head and not realized it, man. You were totally out of it for a while there.”

  Kell ran a hand over his head, fingers rasping through the stubble. There was a tender spot on the back. “Hmm. Must have slapped my head against the wall in the church or something. But as for my question...”

  Tim shifted on the pile of tires where he sat. “We didn't lose anyone, at least not yet. Jason took a round through his thigh, but he'd have been dead quick if it hit an artery. There were other injuries, mostly minor.”

  Kell blew out a relieved breath. “How the hell did we manage not to lose anyone?”

  Tim raised an eyebrow. “No disrespect, sir, but in my experience asking those kinds of questions is an invitation for the universe to make you regret it.”

  Chuckling, Kell put up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry. You guys did most of the work. I won't tempt fate,” he said. “Look, you've both been up all day. Why don't you let me take the watch so you can get some sleep?”

  The two men traded glances, but the dark rings around their eyes said they wouldn't argue very hard about it.

  “You're sure you're good for it?” Drew asked.

  Gesturing to the boarded windows, Kell nodded. “It's not like we can see out there anyway. I think I'm as qualified as anyone.”

  Tim stretched and stood. “Here, you can have my seat. Just yell if there are any problems.”

  “I was going to let you sleep if the zombies attacked, but if you insist,” Kell said.

  The sergeant gave a wan smile. “Sorry, just used to doing things myself.”

  “It's fine, man. Get some rest.”

  For a while he sat there in the dark, the only light the thin slivers of moon filtering in through the high windows, and a single portable lantern set off in a corner. Dim and surprisingly cozy, the garage was far from silent. Gentle snores mixed with the deep breathing of people in serious need of rest filled the place. The almost musical pattern of it, the sounds of life, should have put him to sleep. Instead it reminded him that even though the chances of anything getting inside were slim, he was still responsible for those lives. Living people, endless potential spread before them, in his hands.

  After a quarter hour he decided to do more than sit, pulling his gear over to the tires and spreading it all out on his cloak. Each weapon—and who had retrieved them he had no idea—was inspected closely, a process that normally didn't make him wince.

  His tools had seen heavy use. As he dabbed oil onto a cloth and began the slow process of cleaning the first knife, dried blood caked on it and in the sheath, he looked for the proof in the blade. The edge had a flat spot in it where it had scraped against bone. The tip was chipped. There were scratches all along it.

  Kell studied the blade as he worked, hands slow and steady, but he couldn't summon disgust. There was no regret in him.

  The soft shuffle of feet alerted him that someone was up. A glance over his shoulder surprised him; one of the captives moved in close, sitting on a tire. She wore men's clothing. It hung from her, the sleeves covering her hands but certainly warm enough.

  She watched him work, and if the blood and gore bothered her she didn't show it.

  After a long while she broke the silence. “I wanted to thank you.”

  Kell paused, then resumed cleaning. “You don't have to thank me. Never should have been necessary.”

  “You had to kill those men. I watched, from the office window. I saw you.”

  Kell said nothing.

  “I'm just sorry you had to, is all,” she said.

  Again he stopped, this time turning to face her. “What's your name?”

  “Brandy,” she replied. “Brandy Walker.”

  “Brandy, don't feel bad. Don't waste a second worrying about it.”

  “Why not? Killing people...it's terrible. Even after what they did.”

  Kell waved the knife in his hand in a small gesture. “You know, before all this started I wouldn't have even picked up something like this. To me it was a weapon.”

  Confused, she said, “It is a weapon.”

  “No it isn't,” Kell replied. “It's a tool. The thing is you're thinking of those men as people. Terrible people, but human beings anyway. They weren't. What they did to you they probably did to other women before. They would have done it again. They looked like people, but they were nothing but death.”

  It was Brandy's turn to stay quiet. A faint horror crept over her face, edged with panic.

  “Think about it this way, Brandy; cancer cells are a part of your own body gone wrong. They look like normal cells, but they ruin you. Eat away at you until the body can't keep on. Do you feel bad for the surgeon using his scalpel to cut out a tumor?”

  “No,” she whispered, dark eyes mournful.

  “No,” Kell repeated. “Until you walked over here I barely thought about those men. Now that I am, I can't muster even an ounce of pity for them. There are precious few people left, and I'll be goddamned if I'll let a cancer like them grow bad enough to strangle the life out of the rest of us.”

  He put the knife down, turning bodily to face her. “You think what I did was awful, and you're not wrong. I'm glad it bothers you. Shows you have a respect for human life. That you won't let this destroy you. I don't know if I could be as strong.”

  Painful memories welled up. “Hell, I know I couldn't. I killed those men, and you think it was the wrong thing to do. Or at least not the right thing. But even so, it was necessary. People like me and the rest of the group who came for you have to exist, to do these things, because it lets the good people of the world sleep safe at night.”

  Brandy rubber her arms together under the voluminous sleeves. “You're a good person. You risked your life to save us.”

  Kell shook his head. “I'm a lot of things, but I'm finally realizing good isn't one of them. I almost refused to make this trip, you know. I weighed the options just like the people in North Jackson did. But here's the thing. I set out to kill. Even if they offered us a deal or just handed you over, I would have killed them anyway. Even if they offered to pull up stakes, I'd have done it.”

  A deeper silence followed, longer and darker than the ones before it. Kell took up his cloth again, cleaning and meticulously noting each tiny flaw in the blade. For the first time he didn't consider the blade itself one of them.

  “I don't know what to think,” Brandy said. “I'm angry, and I'm hurt. God, I hurt. I don't wish anyone dead, but I understand the danger they posed. Better than anyone. I'm all screwed up inside. I feel bad because they're dead. There's relief, though, knowing they can't come back for me.”

  Kell smiled, a small sad thing. “Far be it from me to judge you. You've been through hell. Got a right to feel as fucked up as you want. You've got morals, and they're the good kind because they don't vanish when some hard situation comes up. I wish I could make you feel better.”

  She sighed thinly. “Feels like everything's my fault. Like on all those TV shows, you know? Blaming myself. Stupid.”

  Kell shook his head. “Not stupid at all. Natural. Just wrong.”

  She snorted. “Not trying to spare my feelings much, are you?”

  “Never,” Kell said.

  Brandy paused a beat, then lowered herself onto the floor next to him and took up a cloth. “I still think you're a good man,” she said as s
he began to clean.

  “Welcome to your own opinion, even if it's wrong,” Kell said.

  They worked for a long time, talking through the night, and together they saw the dawn.

  It was a ragged group that returned home the next morning. Everyone had small injuries at the least, and no one slept especially well. Leaving the garage was surprisingly easy, but a somber air hung about the huge passenger van as it wended down the long driveway.

  The fight, the escape, and the night in the garage left the group no time for celebration. Kell took some satisfaction in that; what they'd done wasn't something to throw a party over. Kate and Laura helped him unload their gear as everyone else split off into smaller units. Family reunited, people congratulating each other on making it through, and one captive who had been taken from a community much farther away standing by herself.

  He wanted to go to her, to give her comfort and tell her all would be well. At the same time the knife edge of cold in his gut said it was a bad idea. That for all his good intentions his voice would be bare of emotion, his movements mechanical and ultimately empty. The competing urges almost made him laugh; he felt sympathy but knew after the butchery the day before he was too broken to give it.

  One of the other team members, a stocky man named Shaun Wiseman, noticed the woman standing alone and broke off his conversation to speak with her. Kell sighed inwardly and hurried into the house.

  Outside, doors shut and an engine started. Gravel and snow crunched. Funny, he thought, that in a world without day jobs where survival was the only duty, people seemed to waste no time. Then again, the injured needed care, the women returned home.

  “They were asking where you ran off to almost before you made it through the door,” Kate said as she and Laura walked into the kitchen. “I think most of them wanted to thank you. Talk to you, at least.”

  “Sure they did,” Kell said. “Just had my fill of people, I guess.”