The Fall (Book 2): Dead Will Rise (9 page)

Kell nodded. “I understand.”

She took off at a steady walk that looked more like a dance. Her feet found exposed tree roots, flat sections of dirt, rocks, anything solid and quiet. Kell had a harder time; while her boots were thin and supple, his were heavy. Clunky. It made picking his steps difficult, and that was before the added complication of the injury to his foot.

The woman had to stop several times to let him catch up. There was no impatience to it, simply a reaction to necessity. Every time he closed the gap she moved forward again, silent and smooth. They were only fifty feet from the camp when she came to a stop, posture thoughtful.

Kell caught up with her and immediately saw the problem; the fishing lines crisscrossing through the trees were dense. It would be risky for him to put a boot between the lengths of overlapping line.

Again, she pointed. “This is where all of the lines on this side of the camp originate. They're all tied up to these few trees. You can't go around. They run right up to that tree on the edge of the cliff. You have to go over.”

He could have jumped the glimmering web, of course. It wasn't more than five feet across and his legs were long enough to do it with a minimal buildup of speed first. Of course, with his injured foot and heavy boots, there was a chance he'd fall into the lines and set them off.

Kell stripped down to bare feet, held his boots in his hands.

The woman's eyes crinkled above the thick veil of camo material. “Smart.”

She went first, and Kell carefully watched where she put her feet. There were spaces large enough for him to step in, if only by staying on the tips of his toes. A sharp pain lanced down his injured foot as he stretched it; he bit down a curse.

Then they were across. After putting his boots back on, they moved with greater speed as the first gray fingers of dawn began to uncurl across the sky. Kell wanted to ask who she was, how she'd known about the camp, and a hundred other questions. They burned at him, a product of the same innate curiosity he'd lived with his entire life.

Too dangerous, of course. Speaking, even if he weren't trotting along while suppressing the urge to gasp loudly, would have been sheer idiocy. He had no idea what direction Grim and his boys went to hunt, or if others were leaving the camp in his direction. His only chance was that the woman he barely kept pace with knew her business. Knew
their
business, as well.

“We need to find him,” Grim said. “Go back to the camp and see if you can figure out where he left from.”

The runner turned back the way he came, sprinting in the morning sun. From his hiding place above the path, he could only make out pieces of the men below. Too many trees between, though when he thought about it that was a good thing. The shallow depression he and the woman shared was just wide enough for both of them to fit, but not deep enough to completely hide them.

They'd been climbing the hill when the distant sounds of the runner from the hunting camp, the heedless movement of a man in a panic, began to fill their ears. Without warning or explanation she pulled Kell forward and down into the groove between three trees, silently dusting a coat of leaves and debris over him, and unwrapped a length of material from her body to drape across their faces.

It was a diaphanous fabric, light brown and transparent enough to make out the woods around them. There they waited, barely breathing, as the runner caught up with the hunting party. The men stood only a few dozen feet away. Kell wasn't worried about being seen so much as he felt his body try to betray him. It would only take one sneeze, one cough, and the three remaining men would have them cold.

“Son of a bitch,” one of the young men said. It could have been Danny or Pat, though Kell suspected it was Danny. The speaker said the words with a poison edge, something bitter beyond the mere fact of his escape.

“Watch your language around me, boy,” Grim replied, his voice dead. “I'm still your father. Have respect.”

“Sorry,” the reply came.

“Still,” a third voice said. “Danny's right to be upset. Pete said the rope was cut. Said he saw a second pair of prints just outside the treeline. You know what that means, Dad.”

There was a long pause followed by an annoyed exhalation. “I want to argue with you, but you're probably right. That girl is still out here somewhere. And she's been watching us.”

“What do we do?” Danny asked.

There was nothing in Grim's voice when he replied, not the least shred of humanity or warmth. “We kill both of them. And we need to take our catch back anyway. Once we're home, the three of us can start tracking from the camp. Lord knows the others won't be able to do it.”

The men moved away, leaving Kell and his nameless rescuer to wait until they were absolutely certain the coast was clear. It was a long time coming; he counted in his head but gave up after three hundred seconds. Next to him, beneath the thin, filmy fabric over their heads, the woman began tilting her head in different directions. They were very small movements, but they reminded him of a confused bird anyway. Each time she moved, she spent a few seconds in the new position with a look of intense concentration in her eyes.

Eventually she nodded and turned to face him. The covering on her face only muffled her voice a little, and did nothing to hide her smile.

“We're good to go. Let's get out of here and head for home.”

Kell raised an eyebrow. “You're taking me to where you live? I didn't even buy you a drink. Don't know your name, for that matter.”

Her eyes, a flinty blue-gray, drilled into him. The amusement didn't leave her face, what little of it he could see. “My name is Andrea. And yeah, once I get you back to my place, it's going to be your turn to save me.” With that annoyingly cryptic statement, Andrea rose, quickly wrapping the fabric around her middle. She began to climb the hill immediately.

Confused and intrigued, Kell followed.

Once over the ridge, they struck south along the bank of the creek. Speed was more important than stealth now that the sun was out. Kell wasn't much of a woodsman when it came to tracking, but he thought they left little sign.

Several hundred yards down the way, the hills flattened and the creek widened, providing a way across via jumbled rocks strewn across its length. From there it was a quarter-mile trudge to the highway and across it to reach a clump of vehicles smashed up against the woods. The pile looked as though a hurricane swept the trucks and cars out of the way, creating a twisted mass of metal bordering on modern art.

The earth here was beaten flat, baked and dead. There was no grass leading up to the wreckage, which Andrea homed in on like missile. As they approached, a door opened without the squealing rasp he'd have expected from a vehicle so far gone to rust. An oval face peered out with suspicious eyes.

A child, a girl no more than eight.

“Hurry,” the girl said in a hushed voice.

Andrea ducked down and walked into the vehicle, a cargo van whose axle held only on one side. Kell had to crouch and duck-walk through, though the interior was stripped clean and roomier than he'd have thought. He followed Andrea from the rear door to the side of the van, then out into the woods behind the pileup.

Here there were fewer vehicles, a relative term not meant to imply the woods looked like any normal stretch of trees. There were school buses, dump trucks, SUVs, mail trucks, even a limo. They stretched out in front of him the length of a football field and at least as wide. Car graveyards weren't that odd; he'd seen quite a few like it before, if not as large.

This one was...organized. Most of these places were piles or at least smashed fender to fender and without space between. Results of a military desperate to get to their destination and forcing the populace to move off the road. Kell looked up and around to see the trees, no longer trimmed back by highway workers, full and thick with branches drooping down atop the tall pile they'd come through.

The girl snatched Andrea's hand and moved on, leading them a hundred feet back into the woods and on a diagonal. Nested next to—and in—a thick clump of trees was a school bus and an RV. One of the big fancy motor homes you only saw rich people using. The bus was parked next to the trees, while the RV sat snugly between the boles at a right angle. There were branches from a nearby pine covering the space between them, a huge chunk of the pine's side hanging off. Scorched edges. Lightning strike, then.

Andrea and the girl entered the bus at the rear. The emergency door was missing, the frame around it warped. The interior was weathered by two years of storms and wind, the seats ragged with the scurrying claws of small animals. By the time they reached the front of the bus, nestled beneath the broken tree, the light had nearly died. Not a natural death, but strangled by the woods and dense dead branches above and the brown needles covering the place like a shroud.

The little girl worked the door of the bus, which slid open on silent hinges. As the sectioned portal widened, light poured through. It wasn't actually as blinding as it felt, but compared to the dim confines of the bus, it was the light of heaven itself.

“Home at last,” Andrea said.

The interior of the RV was lit by an LED camping lantern. The bottom had a hole in the side, out of which snaked a pair of thin wires connected to what looked like a lawnmower battery. Next to that was a small, folded-up solar panel, one of the emergency kind you're supposed to use to power a phone.

“Nice setup,” Kell said. He heard the bus door close behind him, tiny feet clomping through the narrow space between the vehicles. The little girl brushed past him to stand next to the lantern. “How do you keep the light in? I couldn't really tell.”

Andrea began unwinding the layers of cloth from her body. “We actually did the tree. Well, I did, anyway. The bus door is painted black on this side, top to bottom. There's a frame between the roof of the bus and the back door of the RV, which we leave open when any of us are out. It's covered in a tarp, several tablecloths, and enough glue to keep all those branches from going anywhere for anything short of a hurricane.”

She pulled cloth loose enough to finally whip the majority of it from her in a single motion, letting the circles of fabric fall to the ground. Stepping from the loops, Kell watched her untie the knot tied through one of her belt loops.

“That sounds complicated,” he said as he took her in. She was short (but then everyone was, to him) and slim, though her frame hinted at curves had she not been living in a world where starvation was par for the course. Even so, hard muscle pushed against the arms of the tight leather jacket buttoned up to her chin. Her cheeks were hollow, her legs thin in snug and well-worn jeans. A knot of light brown hair sat atop her head, the color of good honey.

“Not really,” she said. “It wasn't easy, but it was pretty simple. We spent a long time after things fell apart looking for a safe place to live. Been here for more than a year.” Her eyes grew distant. “Lost a lot along the way.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” Andrea replied. “Not your fault.”

A sharp pang of guilt lanced through him.

“I have some questions,” Kell said in a ham-handed effort to change the subject. “Somewhere in the area of about a million of them.”

“Okay, but let me get the kids settled first. And see if I can find us something to eat.”

“Kids? Plural?”

Andrea smiled, a brilliant flash. “Yeah. This is Shelly--”

“Michelle,” the little girl said. “Shelly is a baby name.”

Amused, Andrea conceded. “Michelle. She's my youngest.” She motioned for Kell to follow, leading him through the RV to a darkened room. Lighting a candle, she motioned for him to stand beside her.

Softly, so soft he could barely hear her, she pointed to a bench where someone lay beneath a heavy blanket and said, “This is Evan.”

Evan might have been asleep had he not been completely still. His eyes stared at the ceiling, wide and blue like his mother's. At first Kell thought he was dead, and that he'd walked willingly into some kind of reverse-
Psycho
situation, where Norman Bates was gone and his mother was the one who couldn't accept it.

The thought had no time to translate into sadness, however, because Evan chose the next moment to wind up his chest for what was sure to be an ear-shattering scream in the tiny space. It would have been, had his hand not moved mechanically to his mouth. There were scars there, and scabs, and a few open wounds.

Evan showed no sign of pain as he bit into his hand, the scream choked back. On instinct, Kell reached toward the boy. Andrea's hand clamped onto his wrist with the force of a protective mother. In other words, the strength of an angry she-bear.

“Don't,” she said. “You'll only make it worse. You being here is probably why he's upset. Come on.”

Back down the length of the RV to the bedroom. Michelle glanced up at them when they walked in, then returned to sharpening a knife as long as her forearm as she kicked her legs on the side of the bed.

“Jesus,” Kell said. “I...I'm amazed. How have you managed so far?”

Andrea smiled, but there was an edge to it. “Not easily. Before, Evan was a totally different kid. Not prone to outbursts or anything. Just quiet. He'd run off to be alone when the world got to be too much for him. Since it all fell apart, he's been overstimulated. Seeing the things he's seen, dealing with danger all the time, it's too much for him. I mean, I can barely cope and I'm not autistic, you know?”

Kell blew out a breath. “Yeah. Wow. So I'm guessing you're wanting me to stay here and help out, right? You and Michelle have been taking care of each other and Evan, but it's getting to be too hard to manage. Am I close?”

Again that sly grin. On anyone else it would have seemed smarmy, but on Andrea it fit. “Very gallant of you, but no. I want you to help us get to wherever you were heading before those men caught you. I want to go to whatever community you were going toward before you got separated from your group.”

Kell's mouth fell open. “
What
? How on earth could you know that?”

Andrea laughed, flourishing her hands. “Magic.”

“How long do you think we have until Grim and his people find us?” Kell asked as he helped set the table for lunch. Evan was moving around now, not trustful enough of him to stand closer than the other side of the room, but acclimating faster than Kell would have imagined. Andrea explained that Evan wasn't a severe autistic, that it was only the stress.

She chuckled. “I would say somewhere around a year, if I had to guess. This isn't the first time they've tried tracking me. They're good at it, no doubt, but they won't come this far. They rarely cross the creek and never the highway. At least, so far they haven't. If they do follow us up to the road, they'll never think to check behind the big pile of cars out front.”

“And why is that?”

“Several reasons. One is because the dead people like to wander close to here. Sometimes they even brush up against the RV. Those hunters don't go closer than they have to. But you know, I have a feeling they won't get anywhere near us today.”

She paused a beat, waiting for Kell to ask again. Instead he steepled his fingers and waited patiently.

“Bah, fine. If you're just going to sit there while I finish up, then--”

Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes hard enough to detach his retinas, he gave in. “Okay, Andrea. Please,
please
tell me why they won't come after us today. I simply
must
know.”

She gave him a mock scowl. “No one likes a smartass. So, yeah. They'll be stuck at home anyway since I smeared a bunch of trees with blood and even left a raw piece of venison behind that tent you were tied up next to.”

Kell blanched. “Oh. That's, uh...”

“Pretty diabolical, if you ask me,” Andrea finished.

Putting the last tray of food out, Andrea called for Michelle to join them. Evan still hovered at the door. The little girl barreled past him and hit the table like a prisoner of war seeing his first meal in days. Concerned, Kell turned to Evan.

“Would you like me to leave the room so you can sit with your family?”

The boy's eyes flicked toward Kell for a second, his hands tightening into fists against his chest.

“It's fine,” Andrea said. “I'll make him a plate. He likes to eat alone anyway. When I'm done, we'll have us a talk. I did mention some quid pro quo for saving your ass, didn't I?”

“You did,” Kell said. “And I'm happy to help if I can, but I'm kind of up a creek myself here.”

“True enough,” Andrea said. “We can work something out. Besides, you want to know how I knew you were prisoner. That's got to be worth a chat, right?”

His eyes narrowed. “Your Jedi mind tricks won't work on me.”

She laughed, a light sound like tinkling bells. “I'm not asking for promises. Just for you to hear me out. I mean, I'm going to try to convince you to help. If telling you how much of a genius I am persuades you, well, that's a win for us.”

Kell studied her as she made Evan's plate and handed it to him. She walked with him to the cab of the RV and lit a candle, the small point of light revealing his face and hers down the narrow hall. For a brief, fleeting second there was no apocalypse around them. They were a mother and son outlined in soft light, one intent on what was in front of him, the other with an expression of pure love.

“Now we can talk,” Andrea said as she returned and sat at the table. “It's really not that exciting, to be honest. I saw your convoy come by a few days ago. Watched them drive on by. A few were looking out, scanning the area. I thought they were looking for dead people.”

“Probably were,” Kell said. “Probably looking for me, too.”

Andrea nodded. “Had no way to know you were with them, then. Didn't even know you were at the camp. I spent most of that day hunting, brought the meat back for Michelle to cook. Every other day or so I sneak into their camp at night. Arrogant assholes must have thought they scared me off last time. Never think to look for living people, just the dead.”

Kell tilted his head, curious. “Last time? What happened?”

She nodded toward Michelle. “Little ears. Later, okay?” He agreed.

“Anyway, I like to keep an eye on them, listen in to make sure they aren't coming after me. They don't know about the kids, and I want to keep it that way. So I got a nap in, slipped in the same way you and I left, and what do I find?” She poked him in the chest. “You, big fella. I hid back there for hours. Saw the attack, saw you fight. Watched you sleep--”

“Which isn't creepy
at all.
” Kell said.

“I was trying to rescue you. Don't be picky,” she continued. “Anyway, I knew I'd have to wake you up. No matter how nice some of them seem, those people are not folks you want to stay with. None of them.”

Kell shivered. “Yeah, I was starting to get that impression. Grim is...something.”

Andrea grimaced. “He's a sociopath, is what he is.”

Another long beat. “Wasn't hard to do the math,” she said. “Figured there was a good chance you were with the convoy. Not a lot of folks come through here unless it's at one time. Regular traffic if not that often. I thought it unlikely you'd just happen to be traveling through the woods at the same time this big mess of trucks roll through.”