The Fall (Book 4): Genesis Game (5 page)

Like most survivors, Kell had suffered his fair share of injuries over the years. The range was impressive, from the minor bumps and bruises of everyday life to life-threatening. He realized, as he finished packing for the trip, that he had never been so wholly in need of other people's protection.

Sure, the day of the outbreak had nearly killed him. That didn't really count. Those early days predated the months of practice and training he had set himself to with the same rigor he had applied to his doctorates.

Along with the many sundries needed to outfit even a short trip for half a dozen people, Kell packed a lot of extra bandages and straps. Get lost in the wilderness without supplies once, shame on you. Get lost in the wilderness twice...

“You about ready?” Emily said as she strode into his room. She wore camouflage, as did most of the scouts, though it wasn't military issue. From head to toe, Emily was shrouded in faded hunter's togs. Even the straps for her gear and weapons matched. With the balaclava draped around her neck pulled up, she would become a ghost in even mildly dense woods.

It was, Kell decided, a good look on her.

“Yes,” he replied as he slipped the bag closed and buckled it tight. “Not sure I'm comfortable needing you guys to guard me, but I'm ready.”

A few seconds passed without a reply. He looked up to find Emily's gaze raking the walls of his room.

“Man, you really are a genius, aren't you?” she said in a distant voice, lazily waving a hand at his unique style of wallpaper.

There were few bare inches of space. Every surface was covered in wide sheets of butcher paper, tacked up and overlapping. From a distance the paper appeared dirty, the light brown dusted with black motes. When you got within arm's reach—as Emily now was for the first time—the black resolved into lines of text, tables of information, and a fair amount of math.

“I mean, technically,” Kell said awkwardly. “Most of that is just my research over the last year; along with the relevant data from before everything went to shit to provide reference points.”

Emily nodded. “The end of the world does that, you know? Makes you forget who people used to be. You see a guy working in the field with you, the first thought on your mind isn't that he was a mechanical engineer and drove an expensive car. You know him as someone who has your back. Shares the work.”

Kell shrugged against his bandages, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. “It's not something I'm proud of,” he said.

She glanced at him, surprised. “Really? All that work and you're not proud?”

“No,” Kell said. “I mean being smart. Funny thing about being a geneticist is how it changes your outlook on things like that. My brains are a result of my biology. I was going to be smart no matter what. The work I did getting my degrees, the effort I put in researching, those are things I'm proud of. I don't have an opinion on being intelligent any more than I do on being tall.” He paused, cocking his head. “Then again, the end of the world happened partially because of my being at the head of the class, so...”

Emily gave him an exaggerated eye roll. “Laura warned me you tend toward being maudlin about that. Pretty arrogant to think no one else on the team who discovered Chimera could have made the same breakthroughs.”

Kell smiled. It was Laura's old argument, just from a different set of lips.

“You're right,” Kell said. “I came to terms with that a long time ago. Now I just want to fix it so things can start to get better.”

Emily grinned. “That's what this trip is all about, yeah?”

“Let's hope so,” Kell said.

There wasn't much in the way of fanfare as the small group made ready to leave. Laura and Andrea waited by the van, Michelle buzzing around and between them impatiently. The girl saw him first, eyes flashing with the sort of excited recognition only small children and serial killers are capable of.

Her weight slammed into his legs a few seconds later, tiny arms wrapping around them—as far as possible, that is—in a fierce hug. Kell chuckled and wedged his good arm between Michelle and his thigh, making room so he could scoop her up.

She clung to him, tiny fingers digging into the belts and straps of the gear festooned across his jacket. Michelle laid her head against his chest as a gust of summer wind blew through, sending her wavy hair floating in wispy spirals.

“Be careful,” she said in a small voice.

The words nearly stopped him in his tracks. For a moment, a sense of almost infinite dread filled him. The urge to call it off and stay so she didn't have to worry about him rose up and hit his brain with the speed of a striking viper.

It passed almost instantly, but left behind a thin sadness. A little pride for Michelle, too. Any other child might have told him not to go. That she would hate him if he went and died. Any of a thousand justifiable sentiments that a hurt kid might express because they didn't have the life experience to understand why he had to go.

But not her.

“I will,” Kell said, fighting to keep his voice level. “I've got good people watching my back. Not as good as you, of course,” he added with a smile.

Michelle nodded against him.

The discussion between Andrea and Laura died as Kell approached. The two had become almost inseparable over the last year. The three of them were close, so much so that with a glance Kell could read the situation without needing to hear the argument.

“Evan didn't want to see me off?” Kell asked lightly, trying to avoid the tension between the two women.

“No,” Andrea said. “All the work they did on the van unsettled him. He's in his room.”

“Poor kid,” Kell said. “I didn't even think about that.” Evan's autism meant that interruptions to the routine of compound life—especially when it involved the sort of ear-splitting racket involved in hastily rebuilding a vehicle—could necessitate him isolating himself. Evan couldn't fight, but he wasn't the only person in their community who didn't carry a weapon, and he made himself useful in a lot of other ways.

Kell hoped the noise didn't put the kid off his game for long.

“So,” Laura said in a tone that was dangerous for how deliberately conversational it was. “Andrea wants to come with you.”

Michelle tightened against Kell's chest, her only sign of distress.

“Yeah, I thought that might be it,” Kell said.

Andrea frowned. “You gonna tell me no, too?”

Kell shrugged, a minor feat of strength and coordination in his current condition. “Nope. I'm not the boss of you. But if you insist on going, I won't be.”

Andrea blinked. “What?”

“If you go,” Kell said, “I'm staying here.” He hitched Michelle a little higher up on his hip for emphasis.

Andrea's mouth curled in preparation for a retort, and then relaxed. Kell felt a little bad about the relief flooding through him as she deflated.

“I know you've been getting antsy,” Laura said, not unkindly. “But you know staying is the right thing to do.”

Rather than nod or speak a word of agreement, Andrea stepped forward and held out her hands for Michelle. Kell gave the girl a peck on the cheek and a fast hug before handing her over to her mother.

“I'll see you soon,” Kell said.

“You better,” Michelle replied.

He and Laura waited until the pair were out of earshot before turning back to each other. Kell didn't hold back the rueful smirk. “That's gonna cost you,” he said.

Laura sighed. “No fucking kidding. All that talk about wanting a safe place to settle down, but once she had it all she wants to do is go out and get herself killed.”

“That's not fair,” Kell said. “She thought she'd be doing more scout runs, fighting off swarms, all that. It's hard to live out in the wild, having to survive on pure adrenaline and fear, then drop back from race car speeds to a slow crawl. She's worried she'll get soft. Which would mean not being able to protect her kids.”

Laura's forehead crinkled as her brows arched. “You're sound pretty sure about that. You think you know my girlfriend better than I do?”

Kell shrugged, then tossed his pack into the waiting van. “I spent a long time taking a hard look at myself,” he said. “Maybe I learned something while I was doing it. What I do know? I'm not as close to it as you are. Might help me see the big picture more clearly. If I were you, I'd find something for her to do while we're gone. Maybe give her Emily's scout runs or Lee's training schedule.”

Laura rubbed her forehead. “Lord, help me. One of you has to go out but doesn't want to. The other wants to go out but shouldn't. How about I give you this job when you get back? You might be better at it.”

Kell backed up a step, raising his hands. “Oh,
hell
no. My only responsibility is fixing the world. Yours is way harder, and you know it. I've met our people, after all.”

Laura smiled and gave him a hug. She didn't tell him goodbye, which was their longstanding habit. She didn't tell him to be careful, because after the horrors each had been through, there was no need. Instead she let go of Kell and punched him lightly in his good arm before winking at him and walking away.

They left without fanfare, the gates opening and closing like a mouth around them. During the buildup for the mission, one or another of the people planning it remarked how deserted the route would be. How safe and without incident all the evidence indicated the mission would be. Kell watched the compound, his home, dwindle through the armored windows at the rear of the huge van. He knew the only way he wouldn't see it again was if he died out here, and the crew protecting him were some of the most dangerous people he had ever met.

Regardless, it still felt like a goodbye. Years of blood and pain had stripped away any notion of romance or fate about the world. Optimism was a rare and beautiful thing, but Kell was long past the point in his life where feeling positive made him more certain of an outcome. If anything, it did the opposite. Banking on luck or fate or God was a sure way to end up with your throat cut or your flesh devoured. Or both.

Better to rely on yourself and the people around you.

Kell's hand hurt.

It was an expected pain, one he had come to view as a sort of punishment for his injury. Being unable to use his right—and having to favor that side to keep it safe—meant putting an enormous strain on his left. The bench he sat on had originally faced the front of the van before Mason and his team of grease monkeys ripped apart and rearranged everything. Now it sat facing inward, with one of the aluminum hand rails perfectly placed for Kell to brace himself with.

The harness locked around him might have come from a race car, though he really had no idea if the five-point restraint had such lofty origins. Wherever it had come from, Kell was pretty sure the designers hadn't meant for the thing to be anchored to the bare metal wall with fat, sloppy welds.

Pretty much the entire van was that way. It was (thankfully) one of those odd passenger vehicles with an abnormally high ceiling. The sort group homes and moderately sized medical centers might use as shuttles. Which meant Kell could actually stand up, though not without hunching slightly.

The upside of having most of the seats removed was a nice bit of space between the six people in the van. Emily lay curled up on another bench to Kell's right, jacket rolled into a makeshift pillow. Lee stood in the stairwell next to the driver, relaxed posture belying the constant scan of the surroundings Kell knew he was performing. Mason sat across from Kell, as did Kincaid, both men checking weapons and making sure the containers of supplies filling the middle of the van were secure. Kell wasn't sure what the driver's name was. He thought Mason had called him Marco. Maybe Marcus? He was one of the men Mason brought with him to the compound.

The van itself was a testament to what a team of obsessive workers could do with a deadline and a lax concern for workplace safety. Painted on the outside to blend in with whatever thicket of woods they camped in, the thing was armored more heavily than Kell would have thought possible.

“Won't be that hard on the engine,” Mason had explained. “This thing was meant to transport twelve adults for hundreds of miles. We gutted it as much as possible, so the added weight won't make that much of a difference.”

The extra fuel tank hastily welded near the back would ensure they had gas to spare. Kell's worry wasn't so much they'd ruin the engine or run out of fuel, but that the modified vehicle would make too sweet a target. Because whatever the reports said, he didn't really believe this trip could be without the sorts of risk he knew to be out there. Deserted, clear routes like the one they traveled were obvious targets for groups of marauders or even just mundane thieves. Zombies could and did change migration patterns at the slightest scent of new prey.

Snapping fingers brought Kell out of his reverie. Mason leaned forward, slowly drawing his hand back.

“You okay?” Mason asked. “Had a look on your face like someone drowned your puppy.”

“I'm fine,” Kell replied. “Just thinking about how this can go sideways.”

Mason chuckled. “Yeah, I get that. But I wouldn't stress over it too much. Couple of my people are riding ahead of us. Making sure everything's Kosher. I'm with you, because I've been caught by surprise enough to know to expect it.” He waved a hand at the scars crisscrossing his face. “Things might go pear-shaped, but we'll know about it ahead of time.”

The matter-of-fact tone managed to calm Kell a little, something his brooding hadn't been able to accomplish.

Indeed, when keening of a stressed motorcycle engine grew from faint background noise to unavoidable loudness; it didn't bring with it the expected sense of dread.

The van rolled to a stop within a minute, everyone but Kell absently checking weapons and preparing for whatever bad news was about to hit.

Mason opened the door to a knock, pistol carefully angled for a clear shot through should it turn out to be an enemy. Not likely, in Kell's opinion, given the difficulty any attacker would have had prying the location of the van from Mason's people in such a short time.

The scout stood with the visor of his motorcycle helmet raised, exposing dark eyes and deeply tanned skin. Kell saw Mason visibly relax, clearly recognizing the man.

“Rob,” Mason said. “What's up?”

Rob nodded in their direction of travel. “Got a big swarm coming down from the north,” he said. “Looks like they're sticking to the main road, and you're a couple miles west of them. Probably best you stay here while we make sure they keep moving south.”

“Dammit,” Kincaid said. “Do we have any idea of the local terrain? Is there somewhere we can put the van that's far enough off this road that it won't be seen?”

Kell had been in the same meetings as Kincaid where detailed explanations of the safety of the route had been laid out in plain English. Both men knew the entire purpose of taking this path was due to its lack of travel by marauders and normal survivors alike. Which meant the chance of some other fucking thing happening was just as likely. Better to find a safe spot and hunker down.

Nodding, Rob pointed back the way they came. “There's a town about five miles back with a big industrial complex. It's fenced in all the way around.”

“I know that place,” Emily cut in. “We scouted it. I can get us there.”

Kincaid faced her. “How likely is it someone will come looking for us there?”

She grimaced. “I seriously doubt anyone will come close.”

Turns out she was right.

“Wow,” Kell said. “You guys have a weird definition of the word safe.”

The industrial complex was found as promised, and if at first something seemed a bit off about it, the place seemed to be in good repair and utterly deserted. Though the place was situated firmly within the small town it inhabited, there weren't even the usual straggler zombies you nearly always saw.

That realization turned up Rational Kell's interest by a few magnitudes, and when they turned onto the road leading to the huge set of buildings, tanks, and pipes, understanding clicked into place like tumblers in a lock.

The lack of zombies was unusual but not unheard of. That observation made the next almost impossible to miss.

There were no animals. No birds fluttering across the warm winds, no dogs gone feral and chasing down squirrels. There were also no plants. Or rather, there were no living plants, at least within five hundred feet of the complex.

“What the fuck?” Mason whispered as he huddled next to Kell, staring through the windshield. “What happened here?”

Kell pointed to the vast round-ended tanks dotting the periphery of the site. “My guess is entropy. Without people to maintain the systems here, they started to fail.”

Whatever agent had been stored in those tanks had clearly been strong enough to wipe out everything in the area, and keep even grass from growing near ground zero. Rational Kell began reciting a laundry list of possible culprits in the back of his mind, none of them appealing.

“How screwed are we if we stay here?” Kincaid asked.

Kell shrugged. “If the scouts came here before, then it's probably pretty safe. The fence looks brand new. Whatever happened here kept anything from growing on it, so we'll be able to see anyone approaching through the chain link.”

Kincaid cleared his throat. “Not what I mean. Are we at risk if we stay here, do you think?”

Kell glanced at Emily. “Did you guys hang around when you scouted it?”

She shook her head. “It was a quick pass. Didn't go inside the fence.”

“We should be fine,” Kell said. “Whatever killed everything off had to have dispersed relatively fast, so as long as we don't go licking any strange surfaces I don't see it being a problem.”

“What if another system fails and a tank ruptures or something?” Kincaid asked.

“Either it'll be something harmless or we'll be screwed,” Kell said. “Nothing we can do about it.”

Camp was easy enough to set up since everyone but Kell—embarrassingly—would sleep on simple bedrolls on the ground outside the van. Lee helped Kell set up his own space in the safety of the van itself, which would be shut tight once the sun began to set.

With sunset hours away, Kell decided to check out the huge tangle of mechanical equipment, buildings, and storage facilities. Lee joined him. The apocalypse had a way of showing you the importance of the buddy system. Especially when one of your arms is out of commission.

Rather than wander aimlessly, Lee guided them in a wide circle along the fence. The instinct to search for danger was so deeply ingrained that neither man even realized he was doing it, but the complete lack of anything living made the job simpler still. There was always a chance someone had followed them or waited at a distance, though, so there was merit in having a look anyway.

“Wow,” Kell breathed as they slowly spiraled back in toward the main complex. On the side farthest from their camp, a massive array of tanks filled what appeared to be numerous refill stations. That the place had once been a chemical plant and repository was without doubt, and the thought filled Kell with equal parts wonder and fear.

“You know, people probably didn't give this place a second look in the old days,” Kell said. “Took it for granted like most things. It was just a place to work at or an eyesore on the edge of town.”

Lee's brows drew together. “But not you, right?”

“Not me,” Kell agreed. “Though apparently I'm predictable.”

Lee shook his head. “Nah, I'm just used to getting a different perspective from you.”

“I think you're being nice, but I'll take it,” Kell replied. “But I mean
look
at this place. Look at what it represents. The steel and aluminum and composites used to make these containers are the end result of thousands of years of ingenuity. That's just the vessels to hold stuff, mind you. The chemicals? Fifty years ago some of them didn't even exist in nature, or if they did we had no means to store them. The sheer amount of work and knowledge needed to make a place like this possible is staggering.”

Kell pointed at a ruptured tank, the place where its valve stem should have been only a corroded, ragged hole. “I hadn't really put much thought into it before, but do you realize how many places like this must be out there? Hundreds, even thousands, of abandoned businesses, factories, and processing plants full of highly complex systems no longer getting any maintenance.”

Lee nodded in understanding. “Heard something similar happened with New Haven and the supply depot in Richmond. Bunkers full of dozens of tons of ammo, missiles, you name it. We knew for sure people have been raiding military facilities for years...”

“Yes, exactly,” Kell said, cutting in with a strange excitement. “Those are just the obvious threats. What happens when places like this start to fail one after another? Or when some self-made warlord decides it's time to up his arsenal?”

They had reached and climbed a small staircase leading up to what Kell assumed was the main office building. It wasn't high by any measure, but as the whole facility sat on a hill it even the slight change in elevation gave them a bird's eye view of the land below.

The answer to Kell's question was unspoken and obvious, etched into the earth as an empty ring of death.