The Fall: Victim Zero (20 page)

Johnson's face lit up. “We've been hearing from this one,” he said, jerking a thumb in Laura's direction, “all about how well you can fight. I'd love to see you try. You walk around in that armor all the time like it's a badge of honor. I think you wear it because you're scared.”

“
Think what you want, man,” Kell said. “I'm tired of sitting inside every time there's an attack. Give me a weapon and let me help out. I'm bound to be rusty, anyway.”

A shout came from the distance, followed by two loud bleats from a megaphone. It came from the north, signaling undead at two hundred feet from the perimeter.

Johnson smiled. “Oh, you haven't been cleared for a weapon yet, honey,” he said to Kell. “Better run back inside with your girl.”

Instead, Kell laughed. “Fine with me. I'll go without.” He turned and walked toward a cluster of men readying themselves at the edge of the clearing, where a low mound of dirt acted as a barrier. Johnson and Laura moved to catch up with him. The guard grabbed Kell's arm, fingers digging in brutally.

“Get back inside. If anything happens to you, it's my ass.”

Kell showed the man his teeth. “You said I could help. You're going to have to physically stop me.” The megaphone sounded again, this time a single bleat. “Better choose fast. Not much time.”

Johnson's eyes flared with hate, but he released Kell's arm. “Fine, but she goes back.”

Laura laughed. “My friend is out here without a weapon. You can charge me with something after, if we're all alive for that. I'm going nowhere.”

For a long moment, Laura's calm, icy glare met Johnson's fiery gaze, and Kell readied himself to intervene.

Then the screams began as men moved to meet the swarm head-on. Kell raised his hand between the two of them, snapping impatiently to get their attention.

“We don't have time for this,” he said. “Let's all live through the next hour, and then we can fight.”

Johnson looked away first, causing Laura to grin. The guard trotted toward the front, head down, and only then did Kell allow himself a smirk. He and Laura jogged toward the battle together.

“Here,” she said, offering her spare pistol. “You really can't go out there without something to protect you.”

“
God, I can't believe you people,” Kell said. “Those things come running at gunshots. I don't know how this place has survived as long as it has.”

She slapped him on the arm with the gun. “Still, you need a weapon. Take it. I just stood up for you, asshole. You aren't going to waste that completely selfless act, are you?”

“No, I'm not. But I'm terrible with guns,” he said. “You told me the outside of that berm is covered in stakes, right?”

She didn't respond immediately, and Kell saw her eyes narrow in suspicion. “Yeah. They are,” she replied. “Fire-hardened and long. Almost like...”

Comprehension dawned on her face. Kell realized then that she was beautiful. Truly beautiful.

“
Almost like spears.”

Kell's grin widened. “Yeah. I'm gonna be fine.”

The men and women fighting the swarm did so with surprising efficiency. Never having had a chance to see organized resistance against a group of the undead, he slowed his jog to a fast walk and took in the scene.

They fought in threes, one gunner working freely behind two people carrying hand-made shields, each holding a short length of metal that looked like milled steel sharpened to a point. The trios did their best to hold a line, but the lack of a cohesive shield wall meant some were pushed back as others stepped forward to attack. Gaps formed in several places, and while the humans were armored and armed and fought well, they were outnumbered at least three to one.

He absorbed this in a single snapshot. Trying to slip into the gaps would get him shot at the least, and break the line completely at the worst. There were almost a hundred zombies in the swarm, and centered on the human line in a tight group.

Kell watched as Johnson snatched up a shield from the pile next to the berm of dirt, walking through a flat space between two sections of the barrier.

Laura put a hand on his arm, feather-light, and he stopped.

“
You can't just sidle up in there,” she said.

Kell nodded, pointing to the barrier. “I know. So I'm going over. I might need you, but you should stay within the stakes. Keep me supplied.”

“I don't understand.”

“
Just throw me another one when I put my hand up,” Kell said.

Laura growled. “That's not a good explanation, K.”

He dashed up the dirt hill, giving her no choice but to follow.

Carefully picking his way through the stakes, Kell snatched one on the outer row as he moved forward. His leg ached, but felt strong. His heart hammered, pulse beating against his skin. Sweat already poured from him as his nerves lit up like a city at night.

His mind was calm, his hands steady.

Kell circled the swarm and hit them from behind. There wasn't much chance of being shot, as there were bodies ten deep between him and the defenders. He thrust the wooden spear through the back of one zombie, shoving it with all his might until it pierced the undead in front of the first victim as well. He had hoped for three, but the weapon bound up against the spine of the first victim. He released the spear and stepped back, watching them fall.

Experience told him as long as he kept out of their reach, the two undead he had impaled would be unable to rise. Coordination between them was impossible without higher-order brain function, and as hard as he'd lodged the spear in them there was no way they could get it out.

Still unnoticed by the rest of the undead, Kell raised his hand. A few seconds later a wooden shaft sailed over the crowd and buried itself in the ground nearby.

Taking up the fresh weapon, Kell repeated his trick, this time skewering three through the soft tissue in their gut. He was stepping back again when several of the undead in the pack took notice of him at once. The first reached out faster than he had ever seen the dead move, snatching his left arm in both hands and biting down on his forearm.

Kell ignored the gnashing teeth as he lashed out with his right fist at a second zombie, armored glove locking tight into a plastic and steel wrecking ball. He felt the zombie's face crumple under the force of the blow, and a second, shorter punch sealed the deal. He had spent the time in his cell productively, adding hard metal projections to the knuckles of those gloves.

The zombie biting his left arm flew free as he dropped one leg back and flung his arm across his body with his hips. Not a martial arts throw by any means, it was still an effective move for robbing the attacker of his balance. The aluminum links he'd added to the sleeves held as the thing's teeth broke off during the throw. Kell watched it tumble into the crowd, knocking over three of its fellows in the process.

Kell didn't have to raise his hand for the third spear. He spied Laura in the distance, watching him as he moved around the edge of the horde, picking his targets.

Three zombies fell in thirty seconds as he thrust the tip of his weapon into the bottom of their jaws, hitting the sweet spot he had spent so much time learning to aim for. The tip broke off on the third, but the stakes were sharpened at both ends, so he almost casually impaled two more of the undead.

As he freed himself from the swarm once again, Kell realized he'd swung farther from Laura than intended. The nearest spear was a dozen feet away, and the group had noticed him. Seven of them stood between, and they moved with unusual coordination, their limbs not jerky or clumsy. Kell dashed forward into the group, grabbing the nearest of them bodily and hefting him from the ground. With a grunt, Kell chucked the zombie into two others and immediately spun to attack the one he was sure had moved in behind him.

What followed was nothing short of a brawl.

He lost all sense of time and effort. The world faded away, a bundle of details and complications best forgotten. The only thing that mattered was survival; Kell's mind took in every detail and reacted without conscious thought. The location and speed of the undead in his peripheral vision became instantaneous awareness of where they would be in a few seconds, and he moved to intercept. There was no retreat. The idea was totally alien.

He stomped one zombie's knee in backwards, following through until the joint was at a right angle. That one was still falling as Kell turned to break the jaw of a second with a tight, arcing punch. Bone splintered beneath his knuckles and Kell reached into the thing's mouth with his other hand, wrenching its body out of the way by the mass of broken bone and teeth. Another moved in to attack, and Kell sidestepped, snagging its head in his hands and cranking it around until the zombie's neck popped like firecrackers. Kell continued to twist even then, until the filaments connecting Chimera to the rest of the body shredded from the torque.

A fourth he simply knocked over before jetting to the side to bring the steel toe of his boot against its head in two heavy kicks. Then he stood next to the spear, snatching it up from the ground in time to swing it like a baseball bat against the head of a fifth attacker.

The wood shattered, which surprised him considering the stake was as thick as his wrist. The zombie's head deformed under the blow, and it fell to the earth as he danced backward again, looking for another enemy.

It was only then he realized the gunfire had ceased nearly a minute earlier. The herd had thinned enough that the humans could go in hand-to-hand, and most of the swarm was down. The dozen or so remaining were being cleaned up by half the defenders; the other half stared at Kell in naked amazement.

Johnson was one of them. Seeing Kell relax into stillness, the man shook off his surprise and walked up to him. Laura was moving their direction as well.

“
Jesus Christ, man,” Johnson said, all trace of his previous dislike gone. “I've never seen anyone just wade out into them like that before. It was...”

Laura broke in, then, panting and furious. “That was fucking crazy, you idiot! What the hell were you thinking?”

“I don't understand,” Kell said, confused. “Weren't you the one who told me you did supply runs? Surely you've had to fight a bunch of these things at once.”

It was Johnson's turn to look confused. He turned to Laura, aghast. “Is he serious? Does he think...?”

Laura shook her head in irritation. “K,
no one
does that. It's rule number one. You can't fight a swarm by yourself. You'll get a bite or knocked over. They can smell you. When we went out on our supply runs, we
always
cased the places we were going to hit. We always waited until there were minimal enemies. What you just did is suicide. You have no idea how lucky you are.”

Kell laughed. It just bubbled up out of him.

“Okay, sorry,” he said after regaining some of his composure. “But seriously. How on earth do you ever get to the good stuff if you don't clear out places? You're telling me you never do that?”

Johnson shook his head. “God, no. You only get lucky so many times.”

“Well,” Kell said, “I did it twice a week at least, for five months straight. And I'm fine.”

“
No way,” Johnson said.

“
That's impossible,” Laura said at the same time.

“
No, it isn't. Look, guys, I worked in an office my entire life. I never did sports, martial arts, or anything like that. I'm not special. I just pay attention.” He swept an arm out over the bodies of the zombies he had killed or disabled. “Anyone can do this. All it takes is practice.”

“
Yeah,” Johnson said. “That and not being afraid to die.”

His tone implied the statement was a joke, but Kell only nodded sadly. “Yes, that's part of it.” Then he gave the pair a smile. “But you can make up for wanting to live by having good armor and knowing where they like to bite.”

“How do you know all this?” Laura asked.

Kell shrugged. “I pay attention. If you want I'll be happy to explain it to you,” he said, then shifted his gaze to Johnson. “You too, man. Anyone who wants to learn. I'm not an expert, but I spent a ton of time watching these things. I have it all written down, too. I can teach people where to hit, if you want.”

For the first time in the three weeks Kell had known him, Johnson smiled.

Chapter Fifteen

Two weeks later Kell was a full citizen of
the Complex
. The meeting with Phillip and the board had been mostly a formality; by that time most of the population had seen him defending their home, and working with guards in training. It was politics, of course, and Kell knew public sentiment was behind him. Phillip had no choice, but the man stared daggers at him every time they passed each other.

After being granted full citizenship he was forced to vacate his little room. That was the moment Kell discovered that most of the people in the complex lived in much worse conditions. Laura helped him move, and she led him through areas he had yet to see. Darkened sections of factory floor covered with makeshift homes, all plywood and scraps. Some people hauled in the empty shells of vehicles to serve the purpose, and it was to one of these Laura had taken him.