Fallback (15 page)

“You caught him,” I said gently, “and he couldn’t let you tell.”

Cody nodded. His lips were bluer now, and his breath came in fits and starts. “He came at me, swung something at my head…next I knew, I was here.”

Ty swiped Cody’s long, sandy bangs from his eyes. “What did he say? Did he tell you what he was doing, who he worked for?”

“Had to be the marauders,” I said. “They want to know where we’re going. If they can catch a team on the road, steal their supplies before they get dug in at a fallback, and maybe take over the location to boot, they’d have us coming and going. Drain a lot of our resources, and leave everybody nowhere to go when they go for the Compound.”

Cody grunted in agreement, and Ty muttered curses under his breath.

“But why, Cody? Why didn’t he just kill you here? Why leave you…like this?” I choked a little on those last words.

“Couldn’t risk you finding me with a cut throat or a bullet wound. You’d know it was somebody inside then,” he rasped. “Had to be a zombie.”

So the bastard broke his legs, set off another of whatever he’d used to attract the zombies to keep us all busy while he accessed the radio, and waited until the zombies arrived to finish the job. Everybody would assume Cody had run into the woods with the rest of us, gotten cut off, and been overwhelmed. There wouldn’t have been much of him left by the time he was found, but Gil was too clever to risk him being found with a knife or bullet wound, in case the zombies were interrupted at their meal.

“But…but more came than he expected,” Cody said faintly. He was fading fast. He was hiding over by where you came in, but a few of them saw him, so he had to run before he could be sure they finished me off.” There was a long pause while he gathered his remaining strength. His lips had gone gray now, and his eyes were beginning to cloud.

“Okay, Cody, that’s enough,” Ty said. “You can rest now.” He gave me a sad, meaningful look.

“No.” Cody squinted and focused, digging deep. Whatever he had to say must be important. “He…he knows where the fallback is. He laughed about it. F-f-found the map in Marcus’ pouch the first night.”

Son of a bitch. I remembered when the small herd threatened the farmhouse. Marcus had run out of the parlor in his boxers. No jeans, no belt, no leather pouch. Gil had somehow gotten in there and stolen a look.

“That’s okay, Cody, that’s good,” I said, squeezing his hand. “If he’s still trying to get to the radio, he hasn’t had a chance to tell them yet.”

“That’s right, man,” Ty added. “We’ll stop him.”

I was now sure that flash of movement I’d seen had been Gil racing back to the hotel to access the radio while we were all still busy with the attack. He’d have to sneak back in somehow, and get to Marcus’ room undetected, so we had a little time. But not much.

“Easy, Cody, easy,” Ty murmured. “We’ll take care of you now.”

Cody looked at us and gave us one last look at his shy, gentle smile. “I know.”

Then he closed his eyes. His breathing was slow and shallow; he wasn’t gone yet, but we didn’t have long.

Oh sweet mercy, I couldn’t. But I had to. Didn’t I? I reached for my dagger and held it in my trembling hand. We didn’t have guns with us. We were sent out to fight, while the marksmen did the shooting. I’d shot Quinn. “I shot Quinn,” I whispered.

Ty took the dagger from me with his left hand, then clutched mine with his right. “You shot him? Oh, Ellen…baby, I’m sorry.”

“I had to. He trusted me,” I said simply. I felt a tear slip down my cheek and swiped it away with my free hand. There was no crying in the zombie apocalypse. The thought struck me as hilarious, and I choked on a laugh. I realized I was in danger of becoming hysterical, and I couldn’t afford to fall apart now. I took a deep breath and centered myself.

Ty put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him. “It’s okay, Ellen. You don’t have to do it this time. I’m here. You’re not alone. You never have to be alone now.”

I didn’t allow myself to read anything into his words. There would be time enough for that later. For now, I nodded and sniffed, and took Cody’s hand again. It was the least I could do. Ty shifted around on Cody’s other side. The young man’s breathing was sporadic now; we were running out of time. He appeared to be unconscious, though, and that was one small thing to be thankful for.

Ty carefully placed the point of the dagger at Cody’s temple, and with one hard, precise thrust, it was over.

We shared a mournful moment, then got down to business. I laid Cody out under some shrubs at the edge of the clearing, while Ty dragged the zombie corpses away.

Then we turned back toward the hotel and ran.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The angle we’d traveled after entering the woods had taken us almost around the hotel. I would’ve been lost, but there was still occasional gunfire. I hoped that meant the swarm was almost eliminated, and not that we’d been overwhelmed and only a few fighters remained to fire their weapons.

We arrived at the side opposite the battle, which was good. We couldn’t afford to be delayed. I knew in my gut that seconds mattered. We ripped a mattress aside, cast it to the ground, and raced up one of the outside stairways.

The doorways flashed by as we ran toward Marcus’ room and burst inside. Gil sprang back in shock, dropping the radio microphone and a folded piece of paper to the floor. “You found him,” he growled.

“And you’re gonna pay for that, you lousy piece of shit,” I snapped.

I saw indecision cross his face, and realized he didn’t have a good option. He pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed at me. But if he shot me, Ty would be on him in a heartbeat. He couldn’t take both of us; one of us would take him down.

The flip side was either way, one of us would probably die in the attempt.

Gil’s gaze sharpened suddenly, as if he’d come up with an idea. I didn’t like it.

“Ellen, who are you kidding? I know you. I know your history.” He shifted the gun toward Ty. “You can’t kill a living person, can you? Have you ever killed a person, Ellen?” He paused, pretending to wait for an answer I had no intention of giving him. “I didn’t think so. So all I have to do is kill Tyler here. You’ll come at me, I’ll take you, send my message, hide your bodies, and everybody will think you got torn apart out in the woods.”

Dammit. It could unfold exactly that way.

But only if I let it. I had to get him before he decided to eliminate who he perceived as the bigger threat—Ty.

He was wrong. I
could
kill him. And right now I wanted to. Very badly. I hadn’t been able to kill Cody, though it was a mercy…but I hadn’t needed to. Ty was right, and it was okay to let him help me, just as I would always be willing—and able—to help him. But, oh, I could kill
this
fucker. I hadn’t been sure before, which he’d clearly sensed, but I was plenty sure now. I drew my machete, and the bastard had the nerve to laugh.

But Ty saw an opening, and took it. While Gil was briefly distracted by my display of bravado, Ty lunged. He crashed into Gil, and both of them fell to the floor, each scrambling for an angle to get in a punch. The gun flew free and came to rest a few feet away, before Gil swiped a hand out to try to grab it and instead sent it skittering under the bed.

Good. I was terrible with guns. But I was great with a machete. I darted around, trying to line up a clear strike at Gil, the traitorous asshole, but the struggle between the two men was too fluid, too mobile, and I couldn’t risk hitting Ty.

Gil got a good punch in under Ty’s ribs, likely hitting his solar plexus. Ty let out a long, choking wheeze, and suddenly Gil was on top of him. He whipped a knife from a sheath on his belt and held it to Ty’s throat. “Stop right there, Ellen. One move and I open his throat.”

“Bullshit,” I said as I watched Ty struggle for breath. “You’ll kill him anyway. You can’t take him in a fair fight. You’d rather face a girl, so you’ll kill him quick. I got nothing to lose.”

He pressed the point of the blade into Ty’s flesh, and a thin rivulet of blood trickled from the wound. “Then I—”

Ty erupted beneath him, swinging an arm at the hand holding the knife. It sailed through the air, and I didn’t hesitate. I swung with all my might, my machete sinking deep into the side of Gil’s head. Ty scrambled to his feet and ran to my side, and I collapsed against his chest, dropping my machete. I thought I might faint, but clung to Ty, absorbing his strength, and refused to succumb. The old Ellen would have fainted. Or she’d have broken down in hysterics. Not me. Not now. I could do this.

And I wasn’t alone anymore.

As soon as I was sure my legs were steady, we left the room and went in search of Marcus.

We found him still on the opposite walkway, directing the mop-up phase of the battle. Few zombies remained in the lot, and the flow of new arrivals seemed to have stopped. I hoped any who had been wandering around the woods had finally all been drawn to the gunfire, and summarily been dispatched by our team. Melissa and Faith were scanning the edge of the lot, and I noticed Rebecca and Theo emerge from the woods, Anton and Javier close behind. Rebecca flashed Marcus a thumbs-up.

We approached Marcus, hand in hand, and he turned when Ty cleared his throat. “Come with us, Marcus,” Ty said. “Quietly.”

Marcus whispered to John, who glanced at us briefly, nodded, and went back to watching the operation below without alerting anyone else.

Back in Marcus’ room, we quickly explained what happened, while Marcus struggled to take it all in, unable to rip his eyes away from the body lying on the cheap motel carpet with its head in a large pool of blood. “Gil? I never saw it. Fucking stupid,” he muttered. “Anton tried to tell me, and I told him to quit being paranoid.”

So that’s who Anton had been talking about when I’d thought he was saying he didn’t trust Ty. Maybe I’d have to stop jumping to conclusions too.

Marcus knelt and picked up the folded piece of paper Gil had dropped when we’d blown into the room…was it really only a few minutes ago? How was that possible?

Marcus studied it a moment before speaking. “It’s numbers. No, it’s radio frequencies. Numbered one to five.”

I thought a moment, then said, “So, were they using a different frequency on different days, in case someone caught a stray transmission and used it to track them down somehow?” I didn’t really know how radios worked, but it sounded plausible to me.

“Seems kind of convoluted,” Ty commented. “But we don’t know what their setup is. If they don’t have a lot of communication equipment, they probably can’t keep one set dedicated to waiting for a message from each mole they have somewhere, assuming there were more than just Gil, and they can’t use the same frequency for everybody for some reason.”

Marcus nodded. “We gotta call back home and let them know every fallback team needs to take stock of their people. Gil had those of flash-bangs, probably something they made. Start looking for that, and sheets like this.”

“We’re pretty sure he didn’t get a message out, right?” I asked.

Ty nodded. “He was still dialing in the frequency when we got here.”

Marcus thought a moment, then said, “Well, just to be sure, maybe we should contact them ourselves.” I gaped at him, and he gave me a smirk and continued. “To be
absolutely
sure, we need to call ’em up and tell them where we’re going.”

Where we were going?

I must have looked totally dumbstruck, because Ty chuckled. “No, Ellen, he means tell them where we want them to
think
we’re going.”

“Oh,” I said in a small voice, sort of embarrassed I hadn’t picked up on it faster. What could I say? It’d been one hell of a day. “But where would we tell them?”

Marcus turned to Ty. “Son, you worked a lot around these parts, didn’t you?” Ty nodded that he did. Marcus pulled the now crease-worn atlas page from his back pocket and pointed. “What’s around about here, someplace they might believe we’d be headed?”

Ty took the map and studied it closely. After a few minutes, during which I tried not to look at Gil’s carcass cooling on the floor in a coagulating puddle of blood, the mark of my machete forever carved in his cranium, he smiled and turned to Marcus. “Here.” He indicated a spot on the map, and Marcus leaned in to see where he was pointing.

“Fucking perfect, Garrett,” he said, grinning.

“What is it?” I asked.

Ty handed Marcus the map and took my hand. “Somebody got it in their head forty or fifty years ago to build a castle. They tried to make a go of it by giving tours, but who wants to tour a fake castle somebody just built in Nowhere, Kentucky? So it got sold, and it’s been some kind of event center, for weddings and stuff. Walled grounds, turrets, the works. Kind of a fairytale theme.”

I smiled. It was perfect.

Marcus was sold on the location. “It’s a good way from here, and nowhere near where we’re going. But how do we make the call? What if they know it’s not Gil?”

I thought for a minute, then remembered what Cody had said. “Bluetick!”

“Huh?” Marcus asked, confused.

“Cody said Gil was saying base, something, and then he said bluetick to base. Bluetick must be Gil’s code name or some kind of password.”

Marcus stepped toward the radio. “Well, we’ll give it a try. We’re outta here at first light anyway, so even if they bust us, they still don’t know where we are or where we’re going.”

I still didn’t even know where we were going, but it didn’t seem the time to ask.

We discussed strategy a bit more, and Marcus knocked the antenna a bit out of kilter, assuring the signal wouldn’t be too clear. Gil had been with us so long, it was unlikely anyone talked to him regularly enough to recognize his voice, but just in case, Ty would do the talking, having the voice most likely to pass for the dead traitor at our feet.

Marcus looked at the sheet of frequencies. “Day one was the farmhouse. Day two was the impound lot. This is day three, so I’ll try frequency number three. Make sense?”

We agreed it was the best guess we had, so he set the frequency and handed Ty the microphone.

After several repetitions of, “Bluetick to base,” the radio gave a hiss and a crackle, and we heard, “Base to bluetick. What you got for us, bluetick?”

Ty smothered a grin and said, “I have current location and final destination, estimated to arrive tomorrow at nightfall.”

“Sounds good, bluetick, great job. Go ahead, bluetick,” came the reply.

Ty glanced at the map Marcus had given back to him, and read off a highway route a good forty miles from where we were, in the direction of the fictitious fallback point.

“Copy that, bluetick,” said the radio. “We have several teams within two hours of that position, can have them converge. Destination?”

Ty told him about the fairytale castle. The presumed marauder on the other end of the transmission laughed at the visual image, but agreed it sounded like a good location. “Personnel count still the same?”

Ty paused, then said, “Down one from last report.” I choked up a bit thinking of Cody out in the woods.

“Roger that, bluetick. Remember your signal, and we’ll see you in the morning. Good job. Base out.” The radio fell silent. Marcus asked us to step out while he reported to the Compound. The other teams, and the Compound itself, needed to know about possible infiltration, and I was pretty sure if we had anyone in the area we’d just sent the marauders, they’d have a little surprise sometime tomorrow.

The most interesting bit of the radio call was the base’s mention of having “several teams” in the area of our fake location. If they had several teams near there, they likely had them scattered throughout the region. Small bands of marauders hiding out in the hills until they were called to attack a convoy or fallback point could easily explain the abnormal, erratic behavior of the zombies we’d observed. Perhaps they’d also recently used the abandoned mansion as a meeting point, explaining the zombie activity there.

When Marcus emerged from his room again, we went in search of the rest of the team. He gathered everyone and gave them a report on what had happened. More than a few tears were shed on Cody’s behalf, and several people insisted on seeing Gil for themselves, whether to assimilate the information or spit on his corpse, I had no idea. I didn’t care. I was done for the night.

People were sent off to make certain the motel was once again secure and no new threats were wandering out of the woods. Others went to check on the welfare of the animals, minus the two chickens Gil had sacrificed to try to breach our defenses and divide our forces.

I accepted a mug of tea from Jocelyn, hugged Melissa and Faith, and sat on the old picnic table. I must have looked as wrecked as I felt, because Marcus approached, accompanied by Ty. “Dismissed, Hale. I can’t thank you and Ty enough for what you managed to do tonight, and I think you’ve earned a few hours of downtime.”

“We’re leaving a little later than usual,” Ty explained. “Marcus says we only have a few hours to go, and everybody needs the extra time, even if it’s not much.”

I nodded woozily and stood, leaning heavily on Ty. He helped me up the stairs, and when I paused outside my room, he tugged me further down the walkway and produced a key from his pocket. I looked back toward my room, at the key, then at Ty, unable to connect the dots.

“I asked Marcus,” he said. “No big deal, but I want you to be able to rest without the girls pestering you about everything that happened.” He paused. “And to be honest, I really need to hold you right now. That’s all. I think I might be able to sleep a little bit that way.”

“That sounds…like a real good idea,” I said, too exhausted to jump to conclusions in any case.