The Fall (Book 4): Genesis Game (4 page)

Laura smiled approvingly. “What about Griner and Perkins? They're elected council members. Do their opinions matter to you?”

Kincaid shrugged. “They would, if they weren't completely neutral and trying to make it look like they aren't. They're more concerned with what we're doing here. They care about crop yields and security upgrades. They want a cure just like everyone else, but they expect you to make the calls when it comes to that stuff. For what it's worth, I think Perkins has a point when wondering if the trip will be worth it just for samples. But then I don't know the science, so maybe Kell can do wonders with some blood and scrapings. That's probably something you'll ask him about. Griner has no spine, though. He just wants to wash his hands of the whole thing. He has to know how lucky it was for Emily to find not just one but a group of people that fit Kell's criteria.”

Kell sat in stunned silence. He had been right. Whatever peculiarities Kincaid's brain might have, it made him a nearly perfectly blank slate when it came to analyzing situations like this. He had few prejudices to skew his judgment, almost no preconceived notions. It was as astute an analysis as Kell could have given and in far less time.

“I like this guy,” Kell muttered.

“That's good,” Laura said. “Because I'm thinking of putting him in charge of this trip.”

“Why didn't you let her kill me?” the prisoner asked.

Kell sat across from the girl, whose name turned out to be Cari, as she leaned carefully on the narrow cot with her back against the wall.

She was young, confirming Kell's first impression. Underfed and with more stress than any child should endure, she looked even younger than the fourteen years she admitted to. She would have been, what, nine or ten when The Fall happened? Kell wondered if the dot on the letter I at the end of her name had once been a heart shape.

“You're a kid,” Kell said. “It didn't seem right to me. I figured you deserved a chance to be better. To do something better.”

Cari shook her head, a simple gesture but one with more weight of experience than anyone her age should have displayed. “I tried to kill you, man. And you don't know the things I've done just to survive.”

Kell couldn't help laughing even if it was a sound without an ounce of humor. “Trust me; I'm the last person to judge someone on what they've done.”

Cari tilted her head and immediately winced as the motion tugged on one of her injuries. “You do something bad? Why do they let you live here, then?”

“Weird as it sounds, it's
because
of what I did that they want me here. I know you've been interviewed. You know your options, right?”

Cari nodded. “Stay here and be a good girl or die.” The words were harsh, but her tone held no anger.

“Does that bother you?” Kell asked. “The restrictions?”

The girl shrugged. “My dad was one of the people your guys killed the other night. And I'm happy about it. He kept me alive right after things fell apart, but he had to do some bad shit. When he started in with the rest of those assholes, he put himself in charge. Made sure no one fucked with him.” A haunted, distant look took over her face. “Might be hard to understand, but when you're robbing and killing other people for what they have, it changes you. You go to sleep around a bunch of killers and rapists; you do what you have to so they don't see you as a target. Dad made sure I wasn't...weak.”

A pang of overwhelming sympathy flooded through Kell as she spoke. He tried to imagine growing up in a situation so hellish. What Kell had done in creating Chimera was a sin of hubris at best. Even if you ignored the scope it was far worse than what Cari had to suffer through. Because it was clear she did regret those choices and the necessity of them. There was a clear streak of self-loathing for the things she must have done to armor herself against the people of her group. It ran right along the vein of diamond toughness that must have kept her breathing.

“The thing is, if you choose to live here you're going to learn some pretty big secrets. Things we can't trust you to keep to yourself because we don't know you. If it helps, you should know that every other person living here has made the decision not to leave for the same reason. It's too much of a risk. Even our scouts and trading parties make sure they never sleep near people not from this compound, because they're afraid of what they might say out loud while they're dreaming.”

Cari's eyes widened at that. “What the hell are you guys up to?”

Kell gave her a tiny smile. “Can I assume that means you're agreeing to our terms?”

She nodded.

“My hope is that by the time you running off might become possible, you won't want to. But since you're going to be here, you need the facts. And I feel like it's my responsibility to tell you.”

He did.

The next week was a flurry of work as Kincaid put together everything the group would need for their trip. Kell wasn't involved in any of the physical labor, so he bent his efforts to helping plan everything from the load of supplies and weapons they would need to collating available information on routes and zombie migration patterns to design a better route.

Luckily the trip wasn't going to be a long one. Their destination was a fortified community just one state over, one of the rare communities larger than a dozen people near a large town. Kell worked within the parameters Kincaid had laid out in that first meeting and in two more since, and laid out a winding route that would keep them away from known zombie swarms and marauder hunting grounds.

“This should work,” Emily said when he showed her the map he worked out for the trip. “I'll run it by the other scouts just to be sure.”

It was the end of a long day, the late summer sunset marking one less spin of the globe before their departure. Kell felt apprehensive about the trip, and not only because his injuries made him dependent on other people for his safety. It would be the first time he had traveled away from the compound for more than a few hours. He had grown comfortable thinking of the place as home, especially after so many years of bouncing around.

Getting to his feet with a grimace, Kell pulled the straps holding his arm immobile tighter. He had to keep them loose when sitting or they constricted his movements, but when standing or jogging as he was planning to do, tight was good.

Jogging the perimeter had been a habit of his for most of the time he'd lived here, but since his initial injury Kell made it a point to do it as often as possible. If he couldn't fight effectively, he was going to be damn sure he could run.

That was the plan, at any rate. Kell only made it as far as the large open-sided metal building where vehicle repairs were before forgetting why he'd come outside. The sight in front of him caught him off guard, mainly because seeing a swarm of unfamiliar faces and one shockingly familiar one working together on a vehicle that hadn't been there a few hours earlier contrasted starkly with the idyllic farmland.

“Tim?” Kell asked mouth agape. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The tall man unfolded himself from the stool he was hunched over as he welded something to the cargo van in front of him. “Kell! Good to see you,” Tim said. “And you can call me Mason. That's my real name. We're not fighting a war any longer, so there's no need to keep that quiet.”

Tim—Mason, rather—walked over and extended a hand. Kell grasped it firmly and smiled at the other man. He was willing to bet Mason didn't get many smiles, looking the way he did. Heavy scars twisted along every inch of exposed skin. They weren't patterned in any real sense, not the way you'd think of someone with burn scars or injuries from a mechanical device would be. These scars were ragged and came in groups; the results of a fight with a bunch of zombies that Mason had somehow won.

The facial scars were bad, if not as thick as the ones on his arms and shoulders. The tank top Mason wore left little to the imagination. Heavy muscles and a frame not much smaller than Kell's own gave truth to the impression that the guy was just a beast. Though Kell had no idea what he'd looked like before, it was still obvious that the missing pieces of skin on Mason's face had resulted in hasty and inexpert sewing to pull the ragged edges together. His face had lost symmetry and gained a canted, stretched appearance.

“As for what I'm doing here,” Mason said with a wink, “I'm your driver. I even brought my own wheels.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the van, which was quickly being transformed into something fit for the dangerous world outside.

“How did anyone manage to find you in time?” Kell asked. “We haven't sent any scouts your way in a while.”

Mason shook his head. “Me and my people aren't staying down south anymore. Since the UAS stopped being a bunch of dicks, there's been no need for me to spy on them. Other people can do that. We were already talking about joining up with you when Emily sent word telling us you might need a little help.”

“Sent word?” Kell repeated, brow furrowed.

Mason grinned. “Sure. We've been camped out about a hundred and fifty miles southwest of here for a few months. Haven't you wondered why no random groups of zombies or other bad guys have come from that direction?”

Kell had, actually, but...wow. “You're telling me you've been guarding us in an arc that big? Jesus, man, your patrols must have been brutal.”

“Not really,” Mason said. “The others kept watch while I went through and made sure there were blockages along every major roadway and avenue I could find. Not all of them, but enough to drive most of the traffic in the direction I wanted, which was away from here.”

Kell gaped at Mason openly. The casual way he said it made guarding an enormous tract of land seem trivial. What the hell did they teach these guys in SEAL training?

“Are you a wizard?” Kell asked in a mock-dumb voice.

Mason laughed. “Nah, I just have a lot of practice and smart people helping me out. So what do you think? You want me with you?”

Mason was in the middle of explaining the many alterations being made to the van when a sound like a cross between a great jungle cat and an angry bull filled the busy courtyard. Mason's voice dwindled to silence while pointing out the advantages of armor over efficiency, and both he and Kell found themselves staring at the small mobile home situated just to the left of the main house.

The door stood open. Framed in it was Jess, six feet tall and wild-eyed at the sight of Mason. Just behind her was Josh, whose face contained nothing of the bright fury his wife expressed. His expression was one of unadulterated shock, which Kell granted made sense. The last time he had seen Mason, the man was facing off against a pack of zombies as a means of choosing his own manner of death. Injuries Mason had taken before that point were so severe everyone involved assumed they would be fatal.

A reasonable assumption given that at the time only a handful of people on earth knew what Chimera was and how much it accelerated the healing process. A deep part of Kell's brain couldn't help being amused at the idea that in a world where the dead rising was a daily concern, someone should still be caught off guard that a friend somehow survived when it seemed impossible.

“Well, shit,” Mason muttered just loud enough for Kell to hear. “I knew I forgot to do something.”

Jess strode across the courtyard, every hard-earned muscle flowing beneath dark skin tense. Though she didn't run or so much as glance at the other people staring at her, they parted like a biblical sea around her.

Of the things Kell knew about Mason, the first and most obvious was the utter competence at the core of who he was. A more shallow examination would assume that SEAL training had created it, but Kell thought it was the other way around. Mason had excelled in his career because the foundation was already there, a deep part of him. He had faced unbelievable odds and beaten them, had more practical experience with self-defense and killing than any five people Kell knew.

So when Jess landed her first punch squarely on the point of Mason's cheekbone, Kell knew it was because he'd let her. Jess could fight like a pissed-off wolverine, but she hadn't exactly caught Mason by surprise.

Kell stepped back from the fracas, worried he'd take an accidental shot to his injured bits. Being a few yards away gave him a beautiful view of the fight.

For all the obvious fury, Jess had perfect control. The blows she landed had real force, enough to make Mason bring up his forearms to block the face shots. She was wearing her usual working gear; a tank top tight over her chest and loose at the waist so that it flared with every fluid twist of her hips. She punched with the methodical efficiency of a martial artist, every shot backed by the rotation of her body.

The sudden rush of heat in Kell's body was unexpected. Logical Kell wondered why his long-dormant libido, essentially in a coma since the loss of his wife, had decided that watching a beautiful and muscular woman beat the shit out of someone was just what it needed. It wasn't the shine of sweat over her skin; he had worked with her enough that the sight was old hat.

Thirty seconds was all it took for her to make the point. After landing half a dozen meaty body blows, Jess pulled back. The fury in her eyes was undiminished.

“What the fuck, man?” she asked, shaking a finger at Mason. “Do you have any idea how hard Josh mourned you? And you just let him think you were dead all this time?”

The tumblers inside Kell's head clicked. Some part of him understood it from the first, but his conscious mind was the dumber of the two.

It was love he'd felt. Just a little, the sort of harmless crush you get for a friend who happens to be awesome. Attraction was a part of the deal. Kell had felt neither for so long that it was akin to touching your leg after it had fallen asleep; alien and strange, yet oddly familiar.

It was the righteous anger for what Josh had been through after losing his friend. The dedication. As the two of them argued, Kell wondered at the ways life could and would manage to surprise you. He'd thought those parts of his mind and heart dead. Beyond resurrection.

Yet here he was, with proof to the contrary.

Interesting.