by Joshua Guess
Genesis Game
Book Four of The Fall
Joshua Guess
©2015 Joshua Guess
This book is dedicated to all the readers who have waited patiently for it,
overdue as it is.
And for all the people who weren't as patient, too.
Your passion for new words kept me going, and I'm eternally grateful.
Also for Grandma Monaghan, who has never been much of a reader
but never stopped encouraging me to dream big.
Love you, Grandma. You're the best.
Check out my Facebook page:
Joshua Guess, Author
Also by Joshua Guess
Living With the Dead
With Spring Comes The Fall
The Bitter Seasons
Year One (With Spring Comes The Fall, The Bitter Seasons, bonus material)
The Hungry Land
The Wild Country
This New Disease
American Recovery
Ever After
The Fall
Victim Zero
Dead Will Rise
War of the Living
Genesis Game
The Next Chronicle
Next
Damage
Misc
Beautiful (An Urban Fantasy)(Novel)
Soldier Lost (Short Story)
Dog Dreams In Color (Short Story)
With James Cook
The Passenger (Surviving The Dead)
One
Kell prepared to kill himself for the third time that day. It was kind of exhausting.
“Want me to ballpark the number of brain cells you're frying every time you do that?” asked John Liebowitz, his research partner.
“No,” Kell laughed. “I'm fine. Stop acting like my mother. We both know my brain is perfectly safe as long as Chimera is in there with it.”
John sighed but had no response. That was the crux of it, of course. The reason the two men stood within the safety of a remote and fortified compound, in an enormous basement filled with equipment solely for their use. Chimera.
An organism which had lost its ability to naturally reproduce somewhere along the evolutionary path. It wasn't alone in that. A handful of similar life forms had been discovered over the years possessing the same strange coping mechanism, which involved copying DNA from host organisms as a basis for reproduction.
The difference with Chimera was in form and function. Where the others were single-cell or very rudimentary multicellular organisms, Chimera could grow and adapt into a seemingly infinite variety of complex systems. It was a benign parasite that created a symbiotic relationship with whatever host it attached to.
Chimera was unique in the sort of DNA it took from hosts. Its simpler cousins took at random and absorbed everything, while Chimera only kept what was useful. Rather than replicate itself using a fraction of good DNA and a majority without any utility, Chimera brought a staggering variety of genetic material to the party.
The discovery had been made by Kell McDonald. Methods used to alter Chimera to suit given needs had been pioneered by him and perfected by his team.
Until someone made the catastrophic decision to steal an unfinished strain of Chimera for use on the son of a politician. The young man was a veteran with severe nerve damage.
Kell had been livid when told. Not long after, the young soldier died as a result of that terrible choice.
Then the kid had come back to life. Sort of.
“Are you ready?” Kell asked as he did his final check on the equipment. “I'd rather not stay dead.”
“Yeah, I'm good to go here,” John replied. “You think it's going to work this time?”
Kell shook his head. “I don't know. If it doesn't, this will be my last time trying this. I might be crazy, but I'm not stupid.”
John caught his eye and held it. “You're stopping your heart. On purpose. Let's leave the decision regarding your intelligence until after we get your ticker going again.”
Kell smiled and lowered himself onto the gurney. The metal squeaked and groaned softly under his weight. He was tall enough to play for the NBA, had the NBA still existed. Before the dead began to rise, Kell had been bulky but not fat. The years following had whittled him down like an old piece of wood, leaving behind only the tough, thin core.
Of course, the last year had been good for him. For everyone in their small community. As a result, he'd put on a few pounds.
“Give me a count,” Kell said when John shuffled over to the machinery, grumbling about smart people being the biggest idiots. Kell closed his eyes and waited, his breathing normal and deep. He focused on the thrum of his heart, which hadn't picked up in the face of his impending—if temporary—death.
How could it? Faced with the gnashing teeth and raking fingers of zombies every day for nearly five years, forced to watch hundreds die, and knowing the billions of dead at his feet, how could this even compare? With the help of friends he still wasn't certain he deserved, Kell's guilt was something of the past. An artifact of a time that no longer seemed to have been real. If he could stare down death every time he had to so much as take a stroll outside and deal with the mental strain of a planet's worth of bodies, a little thing like cardiac arrest didn't even register.
Kell smiled as he closed his eyes. It never failed to amuse him that he felt pretty good about these little deaths. They helped fill in the picture of what Chimera had become during the wild years of its spread. Every second Kell spent as a dead man added to the sum total of human understanding in regards to the zombie plague, as the rest of the world called it.
Totally worth the risk.
John counted down from ten. Kell's heart actually did speed up a hair by the count of three. A few seconds later it stopped completely.
“Take it easy,” John said as Kell regained consciousness. “You know the drill. Don't try to move just yet.”
“Did it work?” Kell asked, not allowing himself hope.
John shook his head. “Sorry, man. Had to give you a kick start.”
Kell bit back his frustration and closed his eyes. As John recorded vital signs and other measurements, the scratch of pen on paper lulled Kell into a sort of in between place where his mind let go of the outside world. It was there that Kell did some of his best work, a state not unlike meditation.
He knew it was possible for Chimera to take over certain vital functions when a human host was severely injured. That was how zombies came about, essentially meat puppets for the organism trying to reboot the host after death. Kell had seen a man almost shot to death but still retain consciousness after his heart and breathing stopped. Within a minute his blood was pumping again, lungs working like bellows.
In the year since moving to the ass end of nowhere and creating a fortified compound, similar events had befallen others. No two were identical, but every incident taught them more about how Chimera worked.
Kell and John had been unable to recreate the circumstances which had originally ignited Kell's curiosity. Josh, the man who had come back to life, had done so without becoming one of the undead. The obvious reason was that his brain functions were still active, but all the testing since hadn't shown a definitive reason why Chimera would – or could - restart a heart.
That made Kell desperate. Hence the experiments.
“All done,” John said. Kell opened his eyes and glanced at his friend, who checked his watch. “It's about lunch time. You want to take a break?”
Kell sat up slowly. Dying left a body feeling drained and achy, but the storm clouds he felt descending on his mood were formed solely from disappointment. “I think I'll call it a day,” Kell said. “We're at a
dead end.”
“Okay,” John said. “I'm gonna take a few more notes. I'll swing by later so we can talk about our next steps.”
Kell forced a smile and cuffed the smaller man on the shoulder. He meant it to be reassuring, but the truth was obvious if unspoken.
They had gone to incredible lengths and endured a lifetime's worth of horror to get to this place. Safety and seclusion gave them time to research. To plan. Kell had expected to make great strides in finding a way to eradicate the undead without affecting the Chimera inside the bodies of the living.
A year later, and they had almost nothing to show for it.
Kell sighed as he climbed the basement steps and pushed open the storm doors. Light assaulted his eyes as the humid furnace of the outdoors wrapped around his skin. Kell shook his head and blinked, squinting until the world around him was bearable.
“Watch out!” a woman shouted with laughter in her voice. Kell raised a hand to shade his eyes. The world resolved a little more, giving him just enough time to register the tiny blur moving at warp speed before it slammed into him.
“Piggy back ride, please!” the tiny blur pleaded.
Kell smiled and snagged the small girl in his arms, hoisting her into the air. Michelle was forever making a beeline to him whenever Kell stepped out of the lab. At first he wrote her interest off to the time he had spent with Michelle and her family as they made their way to safety together. Her mother Andrea and brother Evan treated Kell like family, too, if not as flamboyantly as Michelle did.
After a year living in their little community, Michelle had become something like a favorite niece. Though they shared no blood, Michelle had firmly established Kell as hers. So rather than be annoyed by the attention of the slim child with her banner of dark blonde hair streaming out as she chased after him, Kell found those moments brought something he had long thought impossible.
Peace.
“I gotcha!” Kell said with a mock growl as he spun the tiny girl around. “You can't get away! You're all mine!”
Michelle's giggle was muffled as her face was pressed against his chest. “No you don't,” she said, an unmistakable edge of mischief in her voice.
With a flurry of motion fast enough to catch him totally off guard, Michelle slipped out of his grasp. Much bigger and stronger, Kell hadn't held her very tight. The wee girl's right hand whipped up through the small gap between them and waved in front of his face. Kell recoiled instinctively and Michelle used the distraction to grab onto the collar of the light jacket he habitually wore.
She used it as an anchor, letting her body sag in his arms. He felt her tiny foot brace against the sheathed knife strapped to his leg, and with a sort of swooping twist she managed to drop far enough to get her other hand around to the back of his collar.
Without missing a beat, Michelle let go with her right hand and with a triumphant cackle scrambled onto his back. Kell stood dumbfounded as her arms snaked around his neck while she laughed in his ear.
“Told you I wanted a piggy back ride,” she said with a look too smug for her years.
Kell bit back laughter. “I see you've been taking your lessons seriously,” he said. “We're going to have to talk to Lee about that.”
The training ground was on the other side of the compound, but the walk didn't take long. The confines of the fortified home the group had built had expanded over the last year, but was still dwarfed by older, more established communities. New Haven, the community they had left behind when settling here, had expanded to an incredible size by the time they set out. It was nearly a mile and a half on its longest side.
Their home was far more modest. Even with Michelle on his shoulders bossily giving orders, the trip only took a few minutes.
Lee White stood watching a handful of students as they sparred in the dirt square used for combat training. In many ways he was Kell's opposite. Where Kell was very tall and heavily built, Lee was just below average height and slim. Kell's skin was dark and made more so by the long summer, while Lee was pale to the point where he got a sunburn just thinking about going outside.
The principle difference was training. Kell spent his formative years already in college working on a pair of doctorates. Learning to fight and building an instinct for it had been born of necessity. Lee on the other hand had grown up learning to shoot everything from bows to machine guns and had taken up advanced lessons in weaponry and unarmed fighting during his time in the Marine Corps.
“Hey, little fella,” Kell said as he approached.
Lee quirked an eyebrow but didn't look away from his students. “If you want to have a friendly match, I'll show you how a little guy fights.” His tone calm and even. Not that the way he spoke was an indicator of intent; Kell had seen him be just as conversational while lopping the heads off zombies.
“Not today,” Kell said. “I was just wondering if the rule about kids not using the things they learn from you outside of class still applies.”
Now he did turn, that calm gaze tilting up toward Michelle. “Yes. Yes, it does. In fact, I end every class with the younger kids with a reminder.” His eyes grew flat and hard as they locked on the space above Kell's head. “Did you break that rule, young lady?”
“Yes, sir,” Michelle's said.
Kell felt a strange moment of pride. Though there weren't a large number of children in the compound, the community still treated every one of them like their own. In New Haven the numbers had been higher, requiring a concerted effort to manage and teach the kids. Here it was closer to a family, and because Michelle wasn't his daughter Kell felt it was perfectly fine for her to be his favorite.
“You didn't hesitate or lie,” Lee said. “Didn't try to make excuses. That's good. Because you were honest, you only have to do five laps. Go get 'em done.”
Michelle scrambled down without any help and darted off to run around the perimeter of the compound. Kell shook his head ruefully as her banner of hair fluttered out behind her.
“She only climbed up on me,” Kell said. “I didn't mean to make her have to do all that running.”
Lee shrugged. “The conditioning won't hurt. It's important to make sure I enforce my own rules, especially with the young ones. It's the only way I can be sure they'll take me seriously, and since I'm teaching them how to survive out there...”
“I get it,” Kell said. “She slipped right out of my arms and pulled herself onto my back. Damnedest thing.”
The impassive mask Lee always wore when teaching cracked into a grin. “We started working on grappling a few days ago. She's a smart kid, learns fast. She just seems to get it, you know? Like some people have a natural talent for math or whatever. Michelle understands leverage and balance and force.”
“I think most kids do,” Kell noted. “Hence the climbing of trees as a time-honored rite of passage.”
“Probably true,” Lee agreed. “She's still got a real talent, though. I'd be willing to bet she'll do just as well with archery and marksmanship when she's ready for them.”
Kell opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the frantic bleats of an air horn.
“Dismissed!” Lee barked, though the class was already breaking apart. When the horn went off it was expected that anyone not performing vital work make their way to the defenses.
Kell and Lee raced in the direction of the horn, which had blown from the southern face of the compound. The main entrance was there, which was actually good news since it was also the most reinforced part of their wall.
His heart picked up its pace somewhat, but was a long way from racing. Too many years of fighting, killing, and facing the prospect of his own death on a daily basis had passed for that. There was worry, which was only natural in any being with a survival impulse, but no panic or fear. No real excitement. Unless an army was coming at them, there were few threats capable of harming their community.
The only real question was whether the strangers heralded by the horns were living or the dead.
The advantage in building a permanent home—at least in Kell's opinion—rested in how much time it afforded you to get things right. He had seen it at New Haven, whose wall and defenses had undergone several major upgrades over the years. While Kell favored his spear when it came to fighting, it wasn't a practical weapon for use behind their own wall.
On the way to his assigned position, he swerved to one of the weapons lockers dotting the property. Intense practice made him an excellent marksman with a bow, which was his ranged weapon of choice. He slung one and quiver of arrows over his shoulder and dashed to the top of the shooting platform to the left of the main gate.
The scene below wasn't near the top of his expectation list. Zombies came first, marauders second, and this far out both were rare. Kell raised his bow and in the time it took to nock and draw an arrow he measured the variables before him.
A motorcycle sputtered toward the main gate, jerking erratically and bellowing thick black smoke. This didn't concern him by itself; a single rider wasn't much of a threat unless they were planning a kamikaze run on the gate. Besides, the bike and rider were vaguely familiar even at a distance and partly obscured by smoke.
What did fuel some small worry was the large pickup truck rumbling along behind the bike. Unlike its quarry, the truck didn't seem to have any damage. The pickup would have quickly overtaken the bike if not for the concrete bumps in the road they had laboriously placed to prevent enemy vehicles from approaching at full speed.
The approach to the main gate was a straight shot, another feat of engineering undertaken over the previous year. Before, the compound sat parallel to the road with only a short driveway. Now any enemies would have to drive through the packed dirt and lumps of stone that defined the quarter-mile road leading straight toward the heaviest defenses.
His assessment was fluid and natural, shaped by years of dealing with one damn thing after another. Kell held his shot only long enough to pick a target, then loosed without hesitation.
