The Fall (Book 4): Genesis Game (6 page)

Trouble didn't find the group that night, which isn't the same thing as not being troubled. Kell in particular looked haggard the next morning, his night a hellscape of dreams featuring the lost and forgotten weapons of yesterday being put to new and terrible uses.

Not that he was one to judge; he had played his part in killing the world. That it had been involuntary and with the intention to help didn't matter to the billions of corpses at his feet.

“Good morning,” Mason said in a singsong voice.

“Meh,” Kell muttered in response. Something slapped against his sleeping bag and slid down; a meal ration. One of the good kind they made back home, thank heaven. The smell of granola and dried fruit filled his nose as he tore it open. Not fancy, but a damn sight better than any of the military rations he'd tried.

“We got the all-clear while you were out,” Mason said, already stowing and strapping gear. “We'll head out as soon as you're ready.”

Kell eyed the bag of food, then sat it on the chair before starting the laborious process of wiggling out of his sleeping bag. “I'll eat on the road.”

It was a beautiful day. Not the sort of summer heat that pushed you to hate nature, instead enough cloud cover to dapple the landscape as they rolled by. Kell watched the slow meander of sunbeams lighting up shadowed places with casual interest.

They saw no swarms as the van cut through the area infested the night before. There were remarkably few singletons as well, and Kell thought it might be a result of the chemical release not far away. Human beings had a middling sense of smell at best, but the undead used it as a primary method of finding prey. If there was even the faintest residue hanging about, it would be a miles-wide warning sign for the dead to stay away.

It wasn't unheard-of. Most communities Kell had seen endured swarm attacks, and burning the undead often had the same effect, if for a shorter time. Ammonia would do the trick, but only held them off for so long. A brief flash of an idea came and went in an instant, dismissed as fast as he had it. Keeping zombies away was pointless if you had to poison the land—and possibly yourself—to do it.

The further east they went, the more the landscape changed. Iowa gave Kell a false sense of the world, pervasive even after a lifetime spent in cities. The wide, windy plains were home to almost endless movement in wild wheat and other plants, but poor in structures and cities in any number.

Now they moved toward greater concentrations of what had once been civilization, and Kell's mind needed time to adjust to it. Even though most of what he saw was at a distance—a purposeful choice to minimize the risk of encountering other people—it was still a jarring transition.

He was just getting used to it when the van lurched, Lee cursing like the Marine he was as he was slammed against the dashboard. Kell wanted to chide him for choosing to stand in the stairwell again, but decided bruised ribs would teach the lesson just as well.

They came to a halt, the muffled clinking of weapons and supplies dying out just as Marco let out a low whistle. Kell unbuckled himself and made his way to the front. Standing behind Marco, who was hunched forward over the wheel in slack-jawed wonder, Kell saw why they had stopped.

A herd of horses had wandered across the road. Not horses as Kell had ever seen them, carefully tended and tame. These were something else entirely. They had none of the controlled, easy manner he expected. They glanced at the van suspiciously, tossing their heads and sending long, tangled manes flying.

They were wild. Probably young enough that they'd never lived any other way.

“What...what do I do, here?”

Kell was at a loss. There was enough pure mass in the small herd to disable the van if the horses got it in their heads to try.

“Are you serious?” Lee croaked from beside them. “Just honk the horn at them. They'll scatter.”

Marco looked at Lee with doubt in his eyes. “You sure that won't just make them angry?”

Lee laughed with a wince. “Where are you from, Mars? They're wild animals. They get scared of loud noises. No different than half the things I used to honk off the road back in Texas.”

Marco honked, which if Kell was being honest seemed like a risky move with several tons of angry horse a handful of yards away, but it worked. They scattered, muscles rippling beneath coats of various colors, and Kell thought he understood the interest early humanity had in horses. They were big and strong enough to reach right down to the reptile part of his brain and make him unreasonably fearful, but there was a deep beauty in them as well. For a second he wanted to be out there with them, riding at that breakneck gallop and feeling the wind slice across his skin as it did their manes and fur.

“You falling in love there, Kell?”

Mason said it from behind him, but there was a smile on his face. “Used to watch wild horses with my dad when we'd go wilderness camping,” the scarred man said, a wistful note seeping into his voice. “I know that look. Had it on my own face a time or two.”

Kell watched the horses recede into the distance, the woods next to the road swallowing them. “We should probably get moving,” he said with more than a hint of regret.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. There was a minor band of zombies, easily avoided, but no other surprises. When the van slowed and made its way off the main road, Kell was curious. When Mason and Kincaid told Marco to stop in the middle of a road surrounded by trees overgrown with kudzu, he was confused.

The two men walked toward a nearby section of the green veil and pulled it aside. Mason seemed to know what he was looking for, and found it within a minute. He and Kincaid hauled tendrils aside and motioned for Marco to drive through.

There was a road there, narrow and crumbling. Pieces of vine slapped against the van, tree branches scraping discordantly across the armor and windows. The inside of the overgrowth was darker than Kell would have thought possible just before noon, but they broke through into the light a few seconds later.

The van came to a halt in a small parking lot sheltered on all sides by more verdant growth. The cedar fence surrounding the space was buckled in places from the weight of it.

“Are we going into the batcave?” Kell mused, mostly to himself.

Emily chuckled. “Dibs on any capes we find.”

Two sets of double-wide garage doors covered most of the building the parking lot butted up against, and one of them opened. Rob, the scout, appeared as it widened, hauling on a chain to raise the thing. 

The van rolled in, Mason and Kincaid jogging in behind it before Rob lowered the door again. Emily helped Kell navigate to the rear door in the dim light and they stepped into the garage together.

It was far from what he had expected, especially considering he'd camped in a few garages over the previous five years. The word that came to mind was cozy, and a moment of contemplation cemented the impression.

The van sat on bare concrete, of course, but the rest of the huge space was taken up with what appeared to be a combination of hideout and observation post. One wall held a vast pegboard tool rack full of weapons, ammunition, and supplies. The floor was covered in a dense pile of carpets, looking as though someone had unrolled bulk carpet in layers. Which, Kell realized, they probably had.

The rest of the space was lined with trunks, mattresses, various observation gear such as binoculars and an assortment of scopes, and the odds and ends that said it was well lived in. There were even lights; power-sipping LED strips traced the edges of the room. Kell didn't hear a generator, but survivors knew their business when it came to renewable energy capture and storage.

“What is this place?” Kell asked.

Emily flopped onto the only chair in the room, a huge leather recliner, and lounged in it with a leg thrown over one of the arms. “It's a safe house we set up with New Haven. Scouts from one of our communities are almost always here.”

Kell frowned and walked over to a low table stacked with recording devices, including a parabolic microphone. “What's with all this stuff?”

“We watch the locals pretty carefully,” Emily said. “The guy we're going to meet, he's the leader of the community where your test subjects are. He's...”

“What?” Kell said sharply. “Dangerous? Who isn't, nowadays? Or is he more like a marauder?”

Emily shook her head. “No, definitely not that. But dangerous as hell, sure. He's kept his people safe by being absolutely ruthless. He's not like us, Kell. He doesn't have much of a gray area when it comes to threats against his community. We like to keep an eye on what's going on around here. Sometimes people act differently when they think you're not watching.”

“We'll be walking from here,” Mason added. “This place is only half a mile from where we're headed.”

“As far as we know, this place is still a secret,” Kincaid said. “Marco is going to stay behind to make sure we're ready to roll at the drop of a hat. I'd rather not have anyone knowing where our ride is stashed.”

“That's great and everything,” Lee said, “but can we have a few minutes to get some lunch? If we're gonna meet someone who might kill us if we sneeze wrong, I'd like to do it with something better than granola in my belly.”

“There's a camp stove and a bunch of propane,” Emily said. “Here, I'll show you.” She and Lee went off through a door that presumably led deeper into the building. Mason and Marco gravitated toward the racks of weapons, quietly muttering to each other. Kincaid took Emily's spot on the recliner, and Kell situated himself on a stack of mattresses nearby.

“Any particular reason no one filled me in on how dangerous this guy was earlier?” Kell asked in a carefully neutral tone.

Kincaid shrugged. “It's not a big issue. I didn't even know until last night. He's apparently pretty harsh with threats, but he doesn't pose one to other communities. His people are almost all farmers. No real fighting force aside from a dozen or so scouts and former soldiers.”

“How is that even possible?” Kell asked. “How do they fight off attacks?”

Kincaid smiled. For once it wasn't a soulless crack in the man's blunt face, but a genuine (if small) show of amusement. “You know, I think it'll be better if you figure it out for yourself. I've only been told, but I still don't know if I believe it.”

“I don't fucking believe it,” Kell said.

“Yeah,” Kincaid agreed, standing next to him. “I'm seeing it and it's pretty hard to compute.”

The road the safe house was situated on bent and turned continuously, buildings and growth hiding the distant boundaries of Trenton, the name of their destination. Kell had suppressed a mighty curiosity as they wended their way through the choked streets. He had seen a lot of cities being retaken by Mother Nature in his time, but this place went beyond. Everywhere—every
thing
—was slowly being devoured by greenery.

So when they came upon Trenton's boundary, those of them who hadn't been there before didn't even realize it. One second they were among a thinning expanse of buildings, then a sharp turn ran them straight into a wall of growth so thick it was impossible to see through at all. It ran across the road at a right angle, seeming to sprout from one building to another.

“What am I seeing here?” Kell asked Emily, who had a vaguely smug look on her face.

“That's their wall,” she said, jerking a thumb at the twelve feet of vines in front of them. “Somewhere inside that is pavement broken down to the dirt. There's reinforced chain link shaped into an inverted V. They grew all this shit on top of it. Through it, too.”

A resonant clang sounded in one of the buildings engulfed by the vines, prompting Emily to raise a hand in warning. “They know we're here. Do
not
touch a weapon.”

With little more than a whisper, a heavy steel door set into the building on the right swung open. A small woman carrying a submachine gun stepped out. Though the weapon was slung comfortably low and in their direction, she seemed at ease. Even if her finger was laid straight out next to the trigger guard.

“Hey, Emily,” the woman said. “Didn't expect you back so soon.”

“Shelly,” Emily said by way of greeting. “Told you I had a doctor interested in those people I met up with. This is him.”

Kell nodded. “Ma'am.”

Shelly smirked. “Politeness. Almost forgot what that's like. Come on in, all of you. Never know what might bite out here.”

They followed the guard through the door. It was a narrow space, at least for Kell and Mason. Their shoulders brushed the walls and ducking was not optional. The concrete walls were fairly new, not more than a few years old. Custom entrances. Kell would have figured that out from the three right-angle turns they had to make and the complete lack of any doors or windows.

The group moved down a steep set of concrete steps, through another twisting maze of corners, and up another set of steps to emerge inside Trenton itself.

Sure enough, there weren't any other guards to meet them. The land here was less flat than Kell would have expected Illinois, sculpted earthen terraces jutting out from gently sweeping hills. Everywhere he looked, food was growing. There were only narrow paths between the vast swaths of fruits and vegetables. In the far distance, a giraffe was eating from a tree.

“Wait a second, that's a giraffe,” Kell said flatly.

After a full beat, the entire group erupted into laughter.

“No, seriously,” Kell said, trying to edge a word into the gales of mirth. “Guys. Either I just had a stroke or that's a fucking giraffe!”

“Sorry, man,” Emily said, wiping tears from her eyes. “It was just the way you said it. So deadpan.”

Rational Kell noted that none of his group were looking at him like he was crazy, so he assumed what he was seeing was real.

“So what's the deal with this place?” Kell asked. “Why...where...” For once, words failed him. It was just too surreal to allow for logical thought.

Emily was still the only member of the group capable of speaking, though the laughter had died down to fits and bursts with the occasional chuckle bubbling up. “You can ask the big man when we see him. All new visitors are required to.”

There were some answers to be found along the way to the house of Trenton's leader, a man everyone simply referred to as Victor. Faded signage made it clear the place had once been a zoo, though that only raised more questions in Kell's ever-curious brain. Why move into a place that had been designed for ease of access, for one. It seemed like the last kind of refuge for safety.

That was what he thought at first, anyway. The walk also revealed some clever adaptations by the residents. Zoos worked hard to hide the concrete enclosures from their visitors to create a more natural appearance. The residents of Trenton took the opposite approach, removing large sections of soil from the edges of those hidden bunkers and outfitting them with custom defenses. One of the monkey pits featured two barred doors set in one side of its circular wall, both ringed with spears of steel and pit traps.

Kell wondered if the place was like some of the larger amusement parks he'd been to, with an entire network of connected tunnels and rooms below ground. If so, this place was more of a fortress than almost anywhere he'd seen since The Fall began.

“Here we are,” Emily said a short time later, leading them up a short and steep path to what had once been a gorilla habitat. So the sign said.

Kell once again revised his assumption when the door opened, spotting a large ape lounging on a fallen log behind a thick sheet of glass. The building itself was lived-in to an almost pathological degree. Clothes dried on lines strung from wall to wall, books stood in neat stacks next to every chair. A small camp grill sat beneath a makeshift stovepipe, surrounded by a surprising array of food, spices, and condiments. Kell eyed a jar of homemade pickles greedily.

“Hello,” said a resonant voice from the dimmer recesses of the room. “Let me get this thing going, hang on.”

Light bloomed in an old-fashioned oil lamp as sparks met wick, bathing a man's face in soft yellow light. He sat behind a table that served as a work desk, and leaned forward to take in the approaching group with intelligent eyes.

Survival in the long term meant cultivating an ability to trust your instincts and take the measure of a person quickly. Usually this meant observing a little, seeing how someone spoke to others and gauging them on things like body language.

Victor was much easier to figure out.

The light played across his face and threw stark shadows over the deep lines of it. He wasn't a young man, probably in his late forties or early fifties, and not without signs of hard living. A few of those lines were scars, too obvious to be surgical in nature but too clean to be anything other than knife wounds. They complimented a nose broken at least twice, judging by its crooked lean.

His eyes measured the group unabashedly, without fear or worry. This was a man who spent his days making decisive calls about who constituted a threat. Kell was reminded of nothing so much as a great jungle cat as Victor scanned them, then wondered if the guy was hiding tigers or something.

“Oh, you're injured,” Victor said, gesturing at Kell's arm. “Make yourselves comfortable. Grab chairs if you like.”

Kell took the warm tone and words at face value, dragging a chair and pulling it roughly in front of the desk. He was aware of Victor's eyes on him the entire time, measuring. Weighing. In itself the watchful gaze wasn't sinister, just a reflexive survival mechanism. The same one Kell had indulged in a minute earlier.

“Emily and I spoke the last time she was here,” Victor said once everyone was settled. “She explained that your group has managed to gather a few scientists who have been trying to come up with a cure.” His eyes rested on Kell. “I'm assuming that's you, otherwise you wouldn't have risked the trip while injured.”

Kell nodded but remained quiet, opting to err on the side of appearing meek.

“As I told Emily before, I have no problem giving you free run of the place. My people are free to talk to you, give you whatever samples, or leave with you.” He paused and scanned their faces, but when he continued his voice was just as pleasant and even. “However, if any of them choose not to speak to you, then you won't push the issue. At all. Each of them has the right to completely ignore you, and if they do you'll respect that and back off.”

It was the lack of threat or emphasis that scared Kell. This wasn't a man who growled or tried to instill fear. Victor saw no essential difference between letting them go about their business and killing them to keep his people safe. One of them was less work than the other, but it was a negligible job if it came to that.

Everyone on Kell's side of the room had enough practice governing their own reactions that no one so much as bristled at the implied consequences of disobeying.

“Would it be okay if I asked a few questions?” Kell asked.

Victor raised an eyebrow. “Other than that one?”

Kell nodded.

“Of course,” Victor said. “I might not answer, but you're welcome to ask.”

Kell glanced at the gorilla behind the glass, which itself was only a corner of the large parcel of land the ape had at its disposal. “Why a zoo?”

Victor smiled, which sent the hard planes of his face off at slightly odd angles. “What's not to love about them?” he asked. “They're already fenced in and walled. They're filled with hidden bunkers and have plenty of farmland, just to name a few reasons. But what you're really asking is why are some of the animals still here, right?”

“Yeah,” Kell said, dragging out the word.

Victor shrugged. “Who else was going to take care of them? Everything fell apart. Even if they'd been released, most of them would have died in the wild. I didn't want that to happen.”

He paused again, as if weighing a decision.

“I know what you were before the world went to hell,” Victor said. “You didn't become a biologist or whatever since then, I'm sure. I guess it's fair you know what I did. I was a criminal. I ran a local drug ring.”

Unsure how to react, Kell merely cocked his head slightly.

“I wasn't a kingpin or anything,” Victor continued. “We distributed a lot of pot, mostly. Sometimes pills. I tried to keep things peaceful, but in that business you always have someone trying to steal from you or take over. It got nasty from time to time.”

Victor waved a hand at their surroundings. “My town wasn't far from here, and by sheer coincidence it sat in the middle of a triangle formed by three other towns, each with their own zoos. When things got too stressful, I'd take my girlfriend and her kid to one of them. For a while I was able to forget.
That's
why I picked a zoo.”