The Fall (Book 3): War of the Living (18 page)

Lee was right about one thing; there were enough of them to roll over New Haven with the merciless strength of an ocean storm.

Kell ran.

For days, it seemed as if running was the entire purpose of him, the sum total of his reason for being. There was always a good reason for him to hurry, of course. He carried vital messages. Someone needed help. Zombies needed killing. Will Price wanted something to eat.

Vital stuff.

There was no one in New Haven better informed than Kell, Laura, and Lee about anything having to do with the enemy or the compound itself. Whatever might have been missed during their time away from Will, he caught them up on. It wasn't altruism, but a pragmatic requirement that the three of them know everything Will know. Being informed meant they had context and information should something happen to Will. In a pinch, he explained, they would be able to speak authoritatively enough to convince subordinates to listen.

The running left him breathless, gasping for air. It rubbed his throat raw, and wouldn't it just be hilarious if Kell lost his voice, finding himself unable to give those orders?

These were the thoughts drifting through the back of his mind as he ran, and they were the most pleasant of the lot.

Days had passed without incident, though as he slowed and approached Will's office, he knew it couldn't last. Inside the door was a water cooler—it even worked, having been hooked up to their precious power supply—which gurgled pleasantly as he filled a cup.

The reason the peace would fail stared him in the face as he drank; a detailed, hand-drawn map of the area surrounding New Haven showed the enemy's advance. Red push pins filled the top of the paper, broad at the top but narrowing as they moved toward the bottom. That much of the plan was working, at least. The enemy would be able to slip people by their scouts on foot, but the vast majority were being forced to use the roads Will wanted them to use.

Reports had been coming in relentlessly, painting a vivid picture of what the enemy had endured in their approach. Hundreds dead on the UAS side already, blown apart by traps or taken by small groups of Union operators.

Kell understood the psychological havoc those teams were inflicting. He had done it himself, at one point or another. He had been the ghost in the woods, waiting for a man to lose focus. One second there were six men around the fire, the next only five. The sheer terror of realizing you weren't safe for even a second was enough to shake even the most seasoned veteran.

He knew, because he'd been one of the men around the fire, too.

“Any news?” Kell gasped as he approached Lee, who was guarding Will's office door.

Lee glanced at the sky. “We got word from out people out west. There's a storm headed this way. Scouts are saying the UAS are gearing up to move.”

Kell frowned. “Using the storm for cover?”

Lee nodded. “Seems like it. Will is talking to Dodger and a bunch of officers now.”

“What about?”

Lee gave him a look that clearly questioned Kell's intelligence, but it was absent from his voice. “Planning an attack, if I had to guess. If they're gonna be on the move, Will's bound to take the chance to hit them hard.”

The meeting didn't take long—they rarely did. Even in the best of times, pointless politicking was frowned on.

Eager to talk to Will and find out the details of the meeting, Kell tried to step through the office door between people exiting. Instead, Dodger appeared and put one hand on Kell's arm, the other on Lee's.

“Hello, boys,” Dodger said with a predatory smile. “Guess who you're working for tonight?”

It was, in all honesty, a dark and stormy night.

Occasional bursts of lightning flashed above, briefly illuminating the woods. Kell was not afraid of being seen; he was too far back in the trees. The rain, less severe beneath the boughs woven into a canopy above, barely registered. He did not fear anything that might find him in the woods, be it zombies or other predators. Beyond his own ability to defend his life, there were hundreds of other people within easy shouting distance.

Kell
was
afraid.

It had been months, maybe years, since he had felt more than a flutter before a fight. The end of the world had the curious effect of turning your anxiety up to eleven and leaving it there until it burnt out. That morning, he would have sworn there was nothing left capable of setting his nerves persistently on edge. He would have been wrong.

Droplets sprayed gently from his lips as he breathed, lost in the fat drops falling from the trees. The clouds above did their dance with physics, diffusing the light just enough to cause reflections in the rain. Barely any of it filtered to the ground beneath the towering trees, but it was enough.

Lee, who crouched next to him, stiffened. Kell's eyes had adjusted well enough to see that much, so he was aware something was wrong even before Lee put a hand on Kell's calf and tapped out a rhythm.

Enemy scout west of their position, the code said. Kell looked down at Lee, who was staring through an infrared scope. Kell couldn't see the enemy, and couldn't do much unless the man walked directly into him. Then again, if the scout was far enough away...

A muffled cry was quickly silenced, followed by an equally muffled crunch. Lee relaxed somewhat, though only relative to the total-body clench he always had when in the field.

Lee grunted, a pleased sort of sound. “Laura got him,” he said in a low voice.

Headlights appeared not long after, their light shattering against raindrops. Four hundred fighters waited, surely as tense as Kell was, split between the two sides of the road. The tension had grown, an antarctic void in his belly, with every mile down the hidden side roads. The feeling had only grown worse as they made their way through the drenched woods, readying themselves for the fight ahead.

The enemy had been made bold. The oncoming lights were not the first group of UAS soldiers to pass this way. The soldiers waiting with Kell had stayed farther back, hiding, as the vanguard passed through. Those were the troop carriers, and men on foot. They were the trail breakers who dealt with any problems. Their scouts hadn't been bad. Kell had watched them move around the woods, after all. There was simply no way for them to check as far and as deeply as they would have needed to find the hidden fighters.

Lee had explained that the UAS would probably expect a roadblock if Union forces planned an attack. Traditional thinking would be to use the cover of the storm to kill as many of the enemy as possible. It was the most efficient and logical use of force possible, and to do otherwise would be suicidally wasteful for a group as outnumbered and outgunned as the Union was.

Traditional thinking was ignorant of several factors.

They had let the vanguard pass, confident if still wary. There were no downed trees or other roadblocks to bar their passage. Kell and the Union soldiers had even waited until the second UAS column's scouts had mostly passed. The one killed by Laura must have been a straggler.

Once the scouts had moved on, making sure the way was clear for the second column, Kell's people had moved in. The bravest of the lot had darted forward, working furiously at the treeline less than twenty feet from the edge of the road. Their reports had been clear; time between scouts and column were limited to ten minutes at most.

The lead vehicles passed, quicker and more agile than those following behind. Kell's heart hammered against his sternum as more lights swam into view. He knew when the lead trucks reached the edge of the area controlled by Union soldiers, because the unmistakable crack of trees falling filled the night.

He was up and moving before the boles could hit the ground. More broken trees fell with the deafening sound of rifle shots, their trunks weakened and only held up with wooden blocks to be pulled at exactly the right moment.

The vehicles dotting the road, large and small, were being cut off from each other. The point wasn’t to harm the soldiers driving and guarding them—though
that
would be a nice bonus—but to create as much confusion and havoc as possible.

The first ranks of Union soldiers slid to a halt inside the tree line, lobbing flash-bangs. Kell didn't envy the people closest to the ensuing detonations, which filled the night with a sound like God's own firecrackers.

Kell pulled his knives, painted black to reduce the chance a stray reflection would give him away. He plunged through the trees, wading through men still trying to blink away their blindness. The first he punched in the face, the knife giving his fist quite a lot more stopping power than he was used to. The man gargled a scream as his jaw disintegrated beneath armored knuckles.

Barely slowing, Kell whipped an elbow into the face of a second man, the armor plates in his jacket spreading the impact out along his arm while shattering the nose of his enemy. The man's head snapped back, bounced against the side of the beast of a truck behind him. He slid to the wet pavement bonelessly.

Lee stepped through the space Kell cleared, pulling himself onto the vehicle. A third man was struggling to regain his senses, raising his weapon toward Kell. In response, he grabbed the soldier by the wrist, yanked him off balance, and flipped the knife into a reverse grip before slashing it across the man's throat. Kell held onto the dying soldier's arm long enough to be sure he wouldn't be shooting anyone.

A crackling hiss and a flare of day-bright light filled the night, creating a tiny sun above Kell's head.

Lee jumped down from the vehicle. “Run!” he shouted.

Kell ran.

They left the piece of artillery behind, along with the three soldiers guarding the side of it they'd hit. It didn't explode. Explosives were complicated, incredibly dangerous to carry around, and too precious to use when other options were available. They would have made for a more dramatic moment, certainly, but Kell was perfectly happy to get away while leaving the enemy to figure out exactly what had happened.

Thermite, or more accurately a modified military version called thermate, was easy to make. New Haven produced it by the barrel. Lee laughed, nearly a giggle, as the two of them pelted into the woods.

“That thing is fucked,” Lee said when they finally slowed. “I put it right on the barrel.”

“You sure that will ruin it?” Kell asked, gasping for breath.

Lee snorted. “You can weld railroad tracks with that shit, man. It was already melting the barrel when we left.”

All up and down the line of broken trees and stopped trucks, gunfire sounded. The screams of men and women filled the night in a discordant piece of grim music. Scared as he still was—now balanced by relief—Kell didn't move to help. He and Lee had been two of the first off the mark, and closer to the road than most. Many, many others faced enemies who had time to recover from their disorientation, time to raise and aim weapons.

They were to hit their target, deposit the thermate in order to disable the big weapons, and run back to cover in the trees. Under no circumstances was any Union soldier to return to the road, no exceptions. The orders were clear.

Kell tensed as the sounds of violence and death washed over him. Lee's rush of elation ebbed as fast as it came, leaving him coiled and ready to move.

Kell jerked now and then when some new horror rang through the night, and more than once he caught Lee start toward him as if to grab his arm. He had a sneaking suspicion the other man had been ordered to stop him from running back to rejoin the fight.

He wondered idly how Lee had been given that order, since the two of them had been together since Dodger hauled them away from Will's office. Dodger was just that good, he supposed.

There was no need to worry. The time when he had been bent on self-destruction had long since passed, and no matter how the deaths of his fellow citizens tore at him, Kell knew better than to take any more risks tonight.

There would be plenty of time for that in the days ahead.

Kell watched as the UAS poured into the enormous clearing around New Haven. Hundreds of men and women, faces grim as they readied for combat, moved in sync. He was far enough away to be well out of the fight, though a stray bullet could easily reach him from his watch post.

The western clearing was big enough to make seeing the surrounding woods on one side almost impossible if you were standing on the other, except for the narrow throat at the entrance to the clearing.  Add in the rolling hills—including the one the community itself was built on—and it made for difficult terrain for attackers.

They had lost nearly half the volunteers on that rainy night several days before, but everyone agreed the cost was well worth the reward. That sacrifice had purchased an invaluable advantage; the number of big guns the enemy could bring against them was reduced to a handful.

Word from Mason was the UAS had officially decided to stop fucking around. Their leadership no longer cared about liberating the vast stores of supplies here in order to feed the troops making the attack run. They wanted to cut the head off the Union, to make an example.

Kell wondered how well that news was sitting with the hungry people actually doing the fighting.

Through his binoculars, he saw uneasy looks on the faces of enemy soldiers. Many of them seemed put off by the ease with which they were allowed to stage their assault. There the target itself sat, only a few hundred yards away.

“Come on, you fuckers,” Lee, at Kell's side as always, said.

“Be patient,” Kell replied. “We want as many as possible before...”

As if on cue, a massive explosion rocked New Haven, followed by several smaller detonations. Soldiers all along the enemy lines raised weapons to shoulders, firing at the few milling figures atop the wall. Others fired shoulder-mounted rockets and mortars. New Haven became a pillar of flying dust and chips of stone as houses inside her boundaries were destroyed, the wall pelted with thousands of bullets.

The zombies on the wall fell quickly, and while the sight of New Haven taking such a heavy beating sent a pang of sadness through him, Kell took solace that no living people were inside to be harmed.

“Here we go,” Lee said.

From all around the woods, shots rang out. What Kell could see was only the beginning of what the UAS faced along the length of the road their forces stretched down. The vanguard fell almost immediately, snipers having picked their targets while the opening salvo rained hell on the buildings.

Kell and Lee were not part of the assault force, though Lee chafed at being kept out of the fight. Kell, on the other hand, was happy to observe and act as support. Guns were not his area of expertise. As horrifying as the slaughter was, it still fascinated him to watch it happen. All through the woods, men would be taking shots from behind armored panels, moving to new positions as needed. The trees themselves gave a great deal of cover, and much work had been done to build as many sheltered areas as possible.

Kell had been one of the people cutting down trees to lay sideways as backstops capable of soaking up bullets. His arms still didn't feel right.

The tactic wouldn't have worked if the UAS had any suspicion the Union volunteers were there. And why would they? Who in their right mind would plant themselves in essentially plain sight with minimal protection while an invading army rolled through?

Question: answered.

Kell watched the front ranks of the vanguard fall, and could see the confusion and chaos reverberate down the road. Part of the problem was the language barrier, as a huge portion of the enemy were conscripts from South America. The leadership, almost certainly shouting orders in English, might not be getting through.

It seemed the conscripts were better off, however. They had, according to all reports, been survivors out in the world. Many of the other UAS soldiers had been drafted from bunker-dwellers, who had less time to get used to the brutal, murderous place the world had become.

Less than two minutes after the Union fighters began shooting, the UAS called the retreat. This was only a fraction of their total number, meant to be a probe of New Haven's strength. It left hundreds dead, their soldiers in disarray.

Killing soldiers had only been part of the plan. Just like the night of the storm, the more valuable goal was to remove the enemy's ability to hit them from a distance.

“They're leaving,” Kell said. “Time to check with command.”

Lee led the way, following a narrow path through the woods. Kell looked back often, both to make sure no one was following and to try for a glimpse of the retreat. He didn't envy the soldiers dying in the road, trying their best to shoot men who only popped into view from behind their trees or armored nest long enough to fire a few rounds.

The closer they moved toward the command post, the thicker the concentration of soldiers. New Haven had a lot of people, somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand, and fully three quarters of them were armed and out for blood. The Union forces who had retreated from the UAS as they forged toward New Haven had joined them, more than doubling that number.

Once word spread that the UAS was focusing its efforts on New Haven, the rest of the allied communities had sent even more people.

Even with the losses suffered a few nights before, it was easy to field eight hundred people to strike at the vanguard. Not a trick they could do twice, but enough of a swat on the nose to make the enemy cautious.

The trees thinned out, revealing a large clearing with a single large tent. Lee peeled off, muttering about getting something to eat, while Kell ducked beneath the canvas.

Will was sitting behind a desk, one headphone pressed against his ear. There was a look of intense satisfaction on his face.

“Guess it worked?” Kell said when Will finally put down the headphone.

“Perfectly,” Will said with a grin. “The three choppers managed to take out the last of their artillery and do quite a lot of other damage before turning back.”

“Is there enough fuel left for another run?”

Will shook his head. “We were insanely lucky to get that much aviation fuel. This was a one-time deal.” He smiled again, showing teeth. “But damn if it wasn't worth it. They're gonna have to come straight at us, now.”

Kell worked in the command tent for the rest of the day. Reports came in faster than usual, as the Union had no choice but to use radio contact. There was a chance the enemy would be able to listen in, but as they were only sharing information from the front lines rather than transmitting orders over the air, the risks were minimal.

The hit-and-run tactics worked for only a little while; as soon as the enemy got itself under control, they were able to mount counterattacks. The UAS was stretched across fifteen miles of road, however, so it wasn't that difficult for the Union fighters to separate into predetermined groups and act as guerrilla units.

At the very least, it would keep the UAS too busy to do more than hold their ground.

Late in the evening, Dodger returned from the field, dirty, sweating, with blood soaking the cuffs of his jacket. Kell stood as the man came into the tent, offering his chair.

“Thanks,” Dodger said tiredly. “Can you get me something to drink?”

Kell unhooked the canteen from his belt and handed it over. “All yours.”

“What went wrong?” Will asked as Dodger took a long swig of water. “You weren't supposed to check in until morning.”

Dodger belched, wiping drops of water from his lips. “Man, that's good,” he said. “Nothing went wrong. As a matter of fact, I came in to give you some good news.”

Will twirled a finger impatiently. “Go on.”

Dodger set down the canteen. “We were able to disperse our captive zombies ahead of schedule. As we speak, our people are leading them through the woods lining the road. Within the next two hours, the UAS will be dealing with a thousand zombies.”

“Good,” Will said. “Other than that, is everything going to plan?”

Dodger nodded. “Yep. Fighters are splitting off into groups of twelve, spreading out all the way to the back of the UAS line. They'll hit and run constantly, coordinate as needed, and hide the rest of the time. We have enough supply dumps hidden out there to keep our people fed for at least a week.”

“More, if we take heavy losses,” Kell said absently as he organized reports.

“That's true,” Dodger said sourly. “But we don't expect it.”

Kell leaned back in his chair, scratching at the stubble valiantly trying to become a beard. “What's the end game, though? I know the tactics, but what happens if we can't defeat them before they take New Haven?”

Dodger raised an eyebrow at Will, who shrugged. “He's going to hear it anyway. Might as well tell him.”

“If they don't turn tail and run after we've hit them with everything we've got, we let them take the place. We wait until as many of them have moved inside as possible, then we light the whole thing up.”

“
What?
” Kell half-shouted, horrified. “The whole point was to stop that from happening!”

Dodger chuckled ruefully. “Son, the whole point is to save as many of our people as possible. New Haven as a place isn't important at all compared to that. If it comes down to it, I'll happily slip the switch and let the explosives and fire do the work.”

Will put up a hand. “It also sends a message that we're willing to do anything to keep our people alive.”

That statement hung in the air for a few seconds. Then Kell said, very carefully, “You can't seriously think that will matter.”

Will blinked. “Of course it will.”

“I don't think it will,” Kell said with a shrug. “I'm not saying we shouldn't fight, but I don't think killing everyone attacking us will make the UAS stop in their tracks and reconsider. Look at the lengths they've gone to already and ask yourself if that seems likely.”

“You may be right,” Dodger said, “but that doesn't change anything in the here and now.”

Kell nodded. “I know. Whatever else happens, we still have to fight.”

It was full dark by the time Kell made it back to camp. The command post would move as needed to avoid the enemy, but everyone else stayed in widely-dispersed clusters of tents and other shelters. The timing of the war was a small but very real blessing; June was as close to the best time to sleep outdoors as you could hope for.

The guards nodded to him as he stepped into the camp proper, little more than a handful of tents circled around a cold fire. A few glow sticks hung from tent flaps, just bright enough to let him see where he was going.

There was no warning; simply a burst of noise like thunder, then screaming. Kell whirled back toward the entrance, his brain not caught up enough to let him operate on anything but instinct. In the distance, bursts of light signaled muzzle flashes. The guards were already running, their own weapons raised.

Kell had passed dozens of people on the way here, some returning to camp, others heading out for duty. All of them armed. Shocked, he hesitated, unsure whether he should run out to assist the guards.

“Help!” shouted a familiar voice. “Someone help me! He's been shot!”

He dashed to toward the sound of the voice, saw the flurry of activity through a flap pinned open. Someone was on their back, another hunched over with hands pressed onto the chest of the prone body. A third frantically moved around the tent as if looking for something.

“K!” Jess said as he barreled through the opening. “We need help, they shot him!”

Laying on the floor, his chest struggling to rise, was her husband. Josh.

Blood welled between her fingers to run in thick rivulets down his armored coat. His eyes were open, but there was no sign of consciousness in them. Shock, of course, and the blood loss wasn't helping.

Kell knelt, assessing as quickly as he could. There was at least one wound beneath her hands, and two others that seemed less severe. The one in the upper right chest could wait, if it hadn't pierced a lung. He thought not, it was too high. If it had, there was little he could do about it. The other seemed to be a graze, so close to the edge of his coat that Kell wouldn't have thought it hit Josh at all if not for the rime of blood around the hole in the fabric.

His vision narrowed, his attention coming into such sharp focus that everything else fell away. Someone—the third person in the tent he'd never seen before, presumably—thrust an emergency medical kit into his hands. The only rational thought going through his head was a review of every second of his training, running at warp speed.

Jess acted as his nurse, moving her hands when he asked. This would be the worst sort of meatball surgery, if it came to that, but before he could attempt anything he had to know what he was dealing with.

The good news was that it didn't seem arterial. As Kell's gloved hands probed the wound, blood continued to well up, but not in a volume that seemed immediately life-threatening. The entry wound was large enough to allow him to slide in his index finger, which he did hesitantly.

It was while he was trying to determine whether Josh's heart had been hit that the man stopped breathing. Kell's hand, only inches from the heart, felt it stop. Across from him, Jess looked up and met his eyes, tears streaming down her face.