by Joshua Guess
A thought hit Kell so suddenly and with such strength that it would have knocked him on his ass had he not been sitting. As it was, the tea in his cup slopped over his hand.
“Esther, tell me,” Kell said as he carefully put down his cup. “The others like you, did they all have serious injuries as well?”
She frowned. “You mean wounds? Bleeding and such?” Kell nodded furiously. “Most of them, yes. Freddy didn't. He fractured his ribs, but none of them broke the skin.”
“Internal bleeding, I'd bet anything,” Kell muttered. “I'm a complete moron.”
Lee lightly punched him in the shoulder. “You're doing the thing where you talk to yourself and sound like a crazy person.”
“Sorry,” Kell said, coming back to reality. “I just realized what we've been missing. It's the degree of trauma, not just death itself. The part of the organism that takes control is in the brain. It's modeled after the brain. It must take a certain amount of activity to force it to react, and that somehow lets them come back without becoming zombies.”
“How does that help us?” Emily asked.
“Because,” Kell said, excited, “it means the brain is the key. There has to be some structural difference, some biochemical alteration, that makes it different than the material spread through the body. I'm betting it's something we can exploit. The only problem is that we'd need to study someone like Esther in ways that just aren't ethical. Or even practical, for that matter.”
Esther eyed him. “What do you mean?”
Kell gave what he hoped would be a disarming shrug. “It means unless one of you dies—for real this time—I don't have any way to study the organism in your brain.”
Esther flinched. “Well, thank goodness for ethics, I suppose.”
“Can't you just find a freshly dead person and study them?” Lee asked. “I mean, we've made enough corpses over the years. I'm willing to bet we'll run into another bunch of marauders at some point.”
Kell shook his head. “That's part of the equation, but I need comparisons. Ideally we'd want to take samples from someone who came back the same way Josh and Esther did. There could be any number of chemical changes caused by temporary death.”
“Hang on,” Emily said, her eyes flashing. “What about the New Breed? Isn't your theory that they're more advanced than other zombies because they've died more recently? Wouldn't their brains have the most evolved form of—”
Kell was just about to agree that it was a good idea that would, at the least, probably give them crucial data points. It was an inspired realization, one he should have made himself.
He didn't get the chance, however, because the world chose that moment to go insane. A warbling klaxon filled the air as multiple distant explosions thumped dully.
“Oh, lovely,” Esther said. “We're under attack.”
Twelve
They ran.
Kell kept up, which was harder than it looked considering it was his shoulder that was injured rather than his leg. The curious thing about systems, especially biological ones, was that the entire thing went out of sync when one part was damaged. Only hours of practice allowed him to maintain his balance without the use of both arms as nature intended.
There was no gunfire, which Kell took as a good sign. The only other option was to assume it was a very bad sign, so he went with the more optimistic choice.
“Do your people not have guns?” Lee panted to Esther, who was running side by side without even breathing hard.
“We do,” she said conversationally. “They are a last resort, however. We have other defenses. If it were living enemies, you'd be hearing gunfire. This is probably just zombies running into the grenade bushes.”
Kell had a powerful desire to know what, exactly, a grenade bush was, but he pushed it aside. A sharp unease filled him, far beyond the usual nerves from facing danger. This was too coincidental, too close to their arrival. Their group had done its best to watch out for anyone following, but no one was perfect. Not even the experts Kell had with him.
If they had unintentionally led some danger to Trenton, there was little chance they would make it out alive.
They slowed at the crest of a hill, then stopped to witness the destruction laid out before them. Kell's natural urge to fight was checked by Lee's hand on his arm, gripping firmly enough to remind but not hard enough to hurt.
A relatively level section of ground was clear of fence and vines alike, a ragged hole ten feet across blown through it. The land on this side sloped down slightly toward what Kell could see was a covered trench. On the other side of the fence, another explosion sounded, the force sending the chain link and its cloak of plant life shaking violently. Dust and debris rose in a cloud, and the zombies coming through the gap staggered.
“What the fuck is doing that?” Emily said.
“Those are the grenade bushes,” Esther replied. “Some sections of the wall don't have much in the way of support from existing architecture, so it was easier to design parts of it to fail and then plan for that. The weak spots have explosives dangling inside the vines and brush, just waiting for a zombie to slash at them. When they try to claw their way through, they dislodge the pins. Pretty effective.”
“Nice,” Lee said, a look of profound respect on his face. “That's some next-level shit right there.”
Esther smiled. “Yes, well, it isn't easy. We have to make the explosives, the casings, the ignition systems, and all the rest. It's a lot of tricky work.”
The covering on the trench was sly enough to trick the first wave of zombies to walk over it, dropping a handful into it up to their chests. The citizens who had arrived first began to move in, carefully striking at heads with tools and farming implements.
There were fewer defenders than Kell expected. Probably because the threat was fairly small, or because the place was too damn big to run across quickly. Not like the enclosure Kell had back home, which could generously be described as cozy.
Things were going fine one second, and then not so great the next. A sudden burst of activity through the hole pushed handfuls of zombies into and across the trench, trampled bodies serving as horrific bridges for the swarm that followed.
There were perhaps twenty defenders in place, none of them armored. Others could be seen as specks moving at top speed in the distance, though the sprawling hills made tracking them difficult. It wasn't that the number of zombies seemed high enough to overrun Trenton itself, but that the immediate threat was simply too much for the people at hand.
“Go!” Kell said, pointing with his good arm.
Lee barely hesitated, jetting forward much faster than anyone wearing armored clothing should have been able to manage. Emily stayed, as did Esther. The former didn't want to leave his side, which was as irritating as it was endearing. The latter was without weapons.
“Emily, go help them,” Kell said. “They're a good forty, fifty yards from here. I'm fine.”
“No,” Emily said tersely. “I can't leave you alone.”
“I won't be,” Kell said, trying to reassure. “Esther is here with me. Here, I'll give her a baton.” He did, unhooking the heavy weapon he had trained with from its spot on his right side and handing it over. “Worst case scenario, I can always run. Go help those people. Please.”
Unlike Lee, Emily didn't hesitate once the decision was made. Had she chosen to stay with Kell, there would have been no hemming and hawing, no guilt. Conversely there wasn't so much as a stutter in her step as she trotted off.
“I'm not much of a fighter,” Esther said, dry amusement twined with concern in her voice.
Kell snorted. “You were mauled to death by a dead man, yet here you are. I'll put my money on that sort of toughness.”
Five minutes later things took a turn.
The deliberately weakened fence had been reinforced on either side of where the designers wanted the breach to form, but the subsequent explosions combined with the weight of zombie bodies to cause a wider split. It w
asn't much as the overall length of the wall went, but the opening grew by five feet almost instantly as supports failed.
A thin spot in the line of defenders caused it to buckle and temporarily fail in much the same way, allowing a fist of zombies to punch through and get behind the line. To their credit, the defenders changed formation instantly, putting themselves back to back.
Not all of the zombies went for that easy kill, though. Some ran into Trenton as fast as they could manage. The easiest route was also the one with two meals standing right in the middle of it, and Kell almost sighed in relief at the prospect of a fight.
“We should run,” Esther said.
“There aren't that many of them,” Kell replied, which was true. Half a dozen in a group, a couple singletons trailing distantly. “Besides, everyone else is occupied. If we can stop them here, we should.”
People were still showing up for the fight, which seemed to have lasted hours rather than a handful of minutes. The problem was the general chaos below, and the additional fighters only added to it. With a glut of zombies inside the defenses, it was nearly impossible for latecomers to join the fractured line.
Kell had no idea where Kincaid or Mason were, but like Emily he made his decision with finality. Protected or not, he wouldn't let any zombies past to harm unprepared citizens. His thoughts drifted briefly to the children he had seen earlier.
“Do you want this club back?” Esther asked.
“Not at all,” Kell said. “I have other weapons. Another one of those, too.”
He slipped one of those weapons around the wrist of his injured arm as well as stuffing a sheathed knife from his pocket inside the sling. Kell cinched the straps tighter with quick movements. After that he extended the police baton with a flick and set his feet.
The zombies didn't slow as they closed in on Kell and Esther, though they did spread out. Predator tactics. Kell had checked the ground nearby to make sure there were no surprises, but the concrete sidewalk was surprisingly intact for its years of exposure. He supposed the residents would have cared for them, unwilling to give up such a useful path through their home.
Mindful of his balance, Kell gave the nearest zombie no chance to get its bearings. He did exactly as Lee taught him, attacking using big movements to counteract the balance problems caused by his bound limb. The result was something like ballet, Kell's body rotating with the wide swing of the baton. His right leg swept around the pivot of his left while his left arm tore through the air in a wide arc to smash the tip of the weapon into the side of the zombie's head.
Kell's momentum reversed at the end of the arc. As the first zombie's head caved and the body began to fall, he lashed in a reverse swing at a second. This required a stuttered, jumping step which ended with mixed results. The zombie went down, which was great, but his odd movement had put his aim off as well as made the zombie react. End result: baton through the eye and nearly through the back of the skull by the feel of it.
Reflex made him release the weapon as he felt it being pulled from his hand. Many a soldier and survivor had met their end chasing down a stuck knife or sword.
A third zombie reached Kell before he could ready another weapon, and the impact of the filthy thing against his frame rocked him on his heels. Fortunately, Kell was able to get his left forearm up in time, letting the zombie claw and bite the heavy armor sewn into the material.
Kell was considering the best way to get the thing off him, favoring a hard kick to the midsection, when Esther saved his ass with a heavy thwack of the baton. She used both hands, which made for an impressive swing.
“Thanks,” Kell said, panting. “Nice form.”
Esther's smile crinkled the corner of her remaining eye. “Tennis, love. Years and years of tennis.”
With a grin, Kell reset himself and aimed for the next zombie. This turned out to be a pair of them. He grabbed the first with his good arm and tried to kick the second backward using the one he was holding as an anchor, but the second zombie wasn't there. A flash of movement crossed his field of vision, spearing the second zombie at full speed.
Kell's kick, without an object of resistance, sent him badly off balance. He tumbled to the ground with the zombie held at arm's length. They landed in a jumble of arms and legs, Kell furiously trying to avoid having his face slashed to ribbons. Training took control again, forcing Kell to hold the thrashing zombie with his legs as he tried to turn the fight to his advantage.
Sickening wetness seeped through his clothes as he locked his ankles together and shimmied around the captive zombie by careful movement of his knees and hips. He tried not to think about what sort of fluids were saturating his clothes, which actually wasn't that hard in the face of grappling with a nightmarish cannibal.
The zombie tensed again, then burst into furious motion. It spun within the confines of Kell's legs wrapped around its torso, but he was ready for it. Its body was in almost perfect position, and Kell didn't let the opportunity pass. He let go with his good arm, reached into the sling on his right, and wrapped his fingers around a small wooden handle.
He pulled, careful not to yank too fast or hard in case the wire attached to the handle caught on his hand. The wire was thin enough to make it hard to see in good conditions, which made aiming it for the neck of the zombie trivially easy. Kell felt the tension in the wire as he pulled it tight, the other end attached to the handcuff secured around his right wrist. It made for a solid (if awkward) anchor point.
The zombie realized something was wrong, but by then it was too late. Kell flexed his entire body, pulled the wire as taut as he could manage, and felt the satisfying scrape telling him the wire had reached bone.
For Kell it was easy. Simple. Just a matter of physics. You take a strong, thin wire and put constant tension on it, and with enough pressure it will cut through almost anything. So when he felt the wire skip along the vertebrae, he pulled up ever so slightly to change the direction of its travel.
The wire bucked as it found the channel between vertebrae, then smoothed out as it severed the nerves within.
Thirteen
Kell kicked out hard to wrench himself from beneath the body of the zombie and its nearly-severed head. He put the handle of the garrote in his right hand to free up his left as he scrambled to his feet. To his surprise, there were no more zombies standing along the path between where he stood and the fight below.
Esther stood with the weighted baton dangling from one hand, dark ichor running its length to drip on the ground. A tall form rose up a few feet away; the flash of movement Kell had seen before he went to the concrete. It was Mason.
Down the slope, Kell could see Kincaid wiping a heavy machete on the grass.
“Nice of you to drop by,” Kell said to Mason.
The scars on Mason's face tightened as he smiled, ripples forming in them. “I had a sneaking suspicion you'd find a way to get into trouble. Have to admit I'm a little surprised at your choice of weapons.” He waved a hand at the garrote dangling from Kell's sling.
“Lee thought I relied too much on the spear,” Kell said. “He saw this as a good opportunity to knock the rust off some of my other skills while teaching me new ones.”
“Still no gun, though,” Mason observed.
Kell shrugged. “I'm right-handed, and even then I'm not a great shot. Lee says I'm too tense about it. Me trying to shoot one-handed and with my left is more likely to end in me hitting a squirrel or a bird in a tree than anything man-shaped.”
While Lee constantly gave Kell shit about his inability to shoot well, Mason nodded as if this made complete sense. “Well, if you're okay up here...”
“Yeah, sure,” Kell said. “We're good. Go do your hero thing.”
“Hardly,” Mason snorted. “I'll send Kincaid up here in case you two need backup.”
He trotted off, and Kell noted two things as he did. The first was that Mason didn't seem to have used a weapon to kill the zombie he tackled, which in and of itself wasn't shocking.
SEAL training and years of surviving the end of the world made him dangerous beyond belief. As cliché as it sounded, Mason didn't really need a weapon. He was one.
The other thing Kell noticed was a bite on Mason's forearm. The man wore armored pants, but had apparently left his jacket behind. Fighting in street clothes was a bad idea, but the glance Kell got at the bite didn't inspire fear. Curiosity, certainly, but not any strain of worry. The bite bled very little, and didn't seem deep.
Surviving the mauling that left him covered with scars must have strangled what little fear Mason had to death. Kell shivered at the thought of being bitten, though to be fair he had used his own armored sleeve as an easy distraction often enough.
“Before he comes up here,” Esther said, pulling Kell back to reality, “did you run into a swarm on your way in?”
“What?” Kell said, confused.
“When you traveled here,” Esther said, her voice low. “Did you run into a swarm?”
Kell nodded. “Yeah, why—oh. We waited overnight for it to pass. They were miles south of us before we moved. I don't think they could have followed us, and certainly not this fast. That was a hundred miles from here. More.”
Some of the naked fear in her face drained away. “Good. That's what you should tell him when he asks.”
“Victor?” Kell ventured.
Esther swallowed and nodded. “He has a reputation. Victor is...unkind to people who put us in danger.”
“I've heard,” Kell said, letting his gaze fall onto the battle below. “You think we're going to get the blame for this?”
“I don't know,” Esther said. “Victor isn't irrational, and it's not as if we don't have attacks even without visitors coming here, so you might be okay.”
“Might be?” Kincaid said as he reached them. “You guys talking about Victor?”
