The Fall (Book 2): Dead Will Rise (28 page)

In no time at all Kell found himself at the picnic table. Kate was there along with Chris and Scotty. They were joined by Laura and Andrea, who had bonded somewhat while Kell was gone. The two joked easily as they sat with the group. Michelle sat on Kell's lap, Evan hovering nearby, carefully balancing a plate on his hand while he ate.

The food was amazing, as much for its taste as its improbability. The human animal can be a vicious, hateful beast when it desires. More than he wanted to admit, Kell had focused on that side of the equation lately. Sitting with his friends again, enjoying the familiar scene around him, he once more marveled at the idea that two years after the world ended, some enterprising people found the will to create all the pieces and parts to make hamburgers, for the sole purpose of giving others something to enjoy.

It was dark.

Many hours later, all the children had fallen asleep. Kell had asked for a meeting of the entire group, every adult member who had jokingly called themselves The Unit. Many of them had late duty, but hadn't complained when he asked them to stay up a little while after work. Others needed to get coverage for shifts they were supposed to have worked.

Kell sat in the door of the RV. In front of him, a small metal trashcan held a fire. They sat and stood in close ranks. Kate and Laura framed him. Andrea sat against Laura's legs. His stomach rolled, but he wasn't as nervous as he had expected.

Around him more than twenty faces looked on, patient and expectantly.

“There's no way I can say any of this without sounding like a pretentious asshole,” Kell said. There was a round of laughter, low and gentle. “I can't thank all of you enough. Some of you act like what we did up north was all me. It wasn't. We took on those marauders together. Without you it would have been impossible. There are women with us right now who owe their lives and safety to you.

“Many of you weren't in that fight. I've heard you say you wish you had been, that you had joined us. To that I can only suggest you be thankful you weren't.”

He paused to take a breath, and noted he had their full attention.

“I want to thank all of you for sticking together. The world is a hard place to live in now, but you haven't let it divide you. Those of you who fought haven't treated the people who didn't any differently for that choice. Those who didn't fight don't judge the actions of those who did, though I'm starting to wonder how far we should be willing to go. We killed a lot of men and they deserved it, but there aren't so many people left on the earth that we can waste them.

“More than anything, I'm glad you're making this a home. A year ago I couldn't imagine living this way, with kids running around playing and community dinners. We drink beer together. That's a long way to come in a short time. You trust each other, and you've put trust in me. You've made me a leader whether I asked for it or not.”

He looked at their faces, now curious.

“I'm ashamed to admit I haven't trusted you nearly as much. For that I'm sorry, I truly am. I have to ask for your help with something, and I can't do it blind. There are facts you need to know going forward. I'm not just doing this because I need your help, though. You have the right to refuse. You don't have any obligation to make the same decision others already have.” He waved a hand toward Scotty and Chris, who nodded. “I'm telling you because you've put your trust in me, and I should do the same with you. Whether you pitch in with this project or not, you deserve that much.”

He took another deep breath, and felt Laura's hand on his shoulder.

“My name,” he said, “is Kelvin McDonald...”

A note from the author:

This has been a strange year for me. If you read the note at the end of
Victim Zero
, you're aware that back in March I quit my job. I'd have done so whether or not I had the slightest chance of making a go of this writing thing. It was just time. I had tax returns in hand, an IndieGoGo campaign rolling, and few expectations. My plan was to stay at home for a few months, write the book I wanted to write, and give in to the eventual need to go back to regular employment.

You changed all that.

While I still may need to get a job down the road, for the near future I'm doing better than I could have hoped for all those months ago. With the popularity of VZ, I've been able to stay full-time as a writer. With luck (and your help) I will continue doing this for as long as you let me.
Victim Zero
was a shot in the dark, the time I took writing it a chance to live my dream for a while.
Dead Will Rise
is a sort of proof-of-concept that I can maintain enough sales and growth to do this for as long as my fingers can type and my brain can create. That's the hope and plan, anyway.

I have a few short stories planned for the near future. The third book in this series won't be my next novel, however. I plan on releasing
Next
, my first foray into the superhuman genre, before I tackle the next book in The Fall. You'll like it, I promise. About a third of it is already written, which means you'll see it sooner rather than later, assuming I don't have another series of unfortunate circumstances that put a halt to my ability to write.

Some of you have been
Living With the Dead
readers for a long time, others haven't picked up the series. I designed The Fall to exist within the same universe and on the same world, sharing characters and story, but not requiring one to enjoy the other. After reading this book, I can't help wondering how many LWtD fans out there figured out who Tim really is. The clues are all there. They're obvious to me, but then I've been planning this for a long, long time. If you did figure it out, don't spoil it for others. But I will say this: if his identity made you happy, you're
really
going to enjoy the next short story.

Thanks for reading and supporting my work. You make this happen.

Joshua Guess

December 13
th
, 2013

Frankfort, Kentucky

PS—stay tuned for a preview of
The Passenger
, my collaboration with James Cook set in his Surviving The Dead universe. If you've read it or heard about it already and passed, feel free to ignore this. If you haven't, I suggest you read on.

Please enjoy a short preview of
The Passenger
, by James Cook and Joshua Guess.

ONE

I've heard it said that dying is easy.

Some philosophers liken it to being born again, and indeed, many religions state it in those terms explicitly. I'm not a philosopher myself, but I have an advantage over them—I've been there. As the old saw goes, dying is easy. Living is hard. 

Reanimating is a different ballgame altogether.

You remember it. It's not like being born in the sense that your awareness develops over time, the memories of blind panic crushed into singularity by the years of consciousness that come later. I remember it all. I was a man, once. I had a job, a family. I had a mortgage, and a nice car, and a collection of ties that had taken years of curating to get
just
right.

I had a name. I swear I did.

The one blessing that came with my death was that it was quick. I remember trying to escape the violence, swarms of undead being cut down by men in uniforms behind me. My family made it through the barricade ahead of me. As I moved through, one of those
things
managed to snag my hand. There was pain. I looked back to see the last two fingers on my right hand gone.

Even then, we knew what a bite meant. There was no time for worry or fear. I spent most of my adult life as a man who never had a chance to make a stand or be brave, but I did at that moment. My family looked at me as I clutched that wounded limb, the soldiers around us staring as they finished the cleanup.

I knew the options. I'd heard them enough times to feel the words indelibly burned into my mind. I could go easy and quick, or I could wait it out. Suffer, burn, die anyway. Then come back.

I didn't think about it for long. I rushed forward to kiss them goodbye, whispered a request to the soldier closest to me, and then ran back through the barricade as fast as my feet would take me. The bites could kill quickly, very quickly. I didn't want to be a danger to my family, or other people lucky enough to escape the swarm unharmed.

There weren't many undead left outside the barricade, and every one of them was moving in the opposite direction. Knowing I was already dead gave me a recklessness I wouldn't have risked otherwise. The few infected that came close enough to almost touch me were kicked or shoved in my desperate attempt to get far enough away that my family wouldn't see me fall.

I was maybe a hundred feet from the barricade when the shot rang out. It took me high in the shoulder, proving that not all marksmen are created equal. The push of the bullet threw me off balance, and I hit the ground at the edge of a small hill. Tail over teakettle, I rolled and thrashed through brush and debris. I heard my clothes tear against a hundred small obstructions; felt the damaged muscle and sinew in my upper back scream at the brutal earth every time I slammed against it.

The trip down the side of the hill seemed to last forever, but finally, it ended. My last memory as a living man was lying half-submerged in a babbling stream. It was cold.
I
was cold. I listened to the crack of gunshots slow down and eventually fade away. I looked up at the sky and wondered how I'd missed the beauty of the stars for all those years.

Funny
, I thought.
Only at the twilight of humankind, when all the lights have gone out, do I finally see the lovely vastness that’s always been there. Just beyond the border of my cluttered little life.

And then I died.

*****

My body woke up before I did.

I don't know if it works that way for the other shambling corpses that make up my current peer group, but my first memory of my new life was coming to sudden and unfortunate consciousness as my body shredded the throat of a screaming man. My instinct was to pull away in horror, but I couldn't. In fact, I couldn't even look away.

I was a passenger. Read-only reality.

I railed and struggled to stop what my body was doing, to no avail. My hands—look there, that's my wedding ring, done in white gold inlays on tungsten carbide—pulled gobbets of flesh from what became a corpse during my struggles.

The full spectrum of sensory data was there, but I had no control over any of it. You can't imagine what it's like. It's not the same as watching some horrific television show you can't turn off. You're actually a part of the program. I felt the hot blood of the dead man running down my fingers. I smelled the sour perspiration on his skin. I heard his bowels cut loose, could taste the warm, salty meat of him as my estranged fingers jammed pieces into my mouth.

After an hour or so of eating and doing the mental equivalent of vomiting inside my own head, I heard something that filled me with hope: gunfire. The area we were in was unfamiliar, so I couldn't be sure if the shooters were soldiers or unsuspecting survivors. Briefly, I wondered how far my errant body had traveled under its new management, but gave up that curiosity when I realized it didn't matter. Wherever I had roamed, I hoped it was far enough away that my family wouldn't chance upon me. I didn't want them to see me this way.

Whoever was firing that gun had a chance to end this for me. My body was already moving toward the sound of the shots.

My God, the shots.

The
sound
.

The best way I can describe it is like hearing in 3-D. Something about the sonic waves ricocheting from the sharp crack of the rifle was akin to depth perception, but far more powerful. I just
knew
the direction it came from, the distance. Like knowing how to grab a ball from the air as it's thrown to you. Whatever the plague destroying humanity was, whatever it had done to me, it seemed to make my body a better predator.

I just hoped whoever I was heading toward was better still.

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