Fallback (4 page)

Melissa took a sip of her coffee, grimaced, and poured in a healthy dose of goat milk. Satisfied with the result, she dunked a piece of biscuit in it and popped it in her mouth. “What if they don’t pick us?” she asked, still chewing.

I shrugged. “Stay here and do our part, I imagine.”

“We’ll go,” Rebecca said. Her matter-of-fact tone said if the council thought she was staying here, they had another think coming. And possibly a beat-down, if necessary.

Melissa clutched her mug in both hands, staring into its milky depths. After a moment, she took a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. “They have to let us go. I can’t stay here now.”

Rebecca looked as confused as I felt. “I gotta say, peanut, I didn’t think you’d want to go. I figured you’d be happier staying here, where things are at least familiar.”

Melissa tried to snort, but it caught in her throat. “Familiar.” She thumped her mug down on the table and gave the rest of her biscuit to Skip. “Familiar can be a big ol’ trap, but it feels so nice you don’t know it until it’s too late.”

I tried to apply this theory to my own life, but it didn’t quite fit. My pre-outbreak life had been familiar. And safe. I realized this was a very personal declaration about one particular event, something from Melissa’s experiences during the early days of the plague. I knew I had to tread carefully. “You might be right, but can you explain? I’m not sure I get what you mean.”

I shot a glance at Rebecca, who gave me a slight nod. She felt Melissa had something she wanted to say, too. We had to let her work her way up to it.

Melissa fed Skip half of another biscuit—that dog was going to get fat—before folding her hands in front of her on the table and looking at us. “Ells, you know Mason killed my mom, right? When he abducted me?”

I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “I didn’t know for sure, but I guessed so, just from things he said, or maybe how he said them.” We had never, not in two years, discussed our captivity in any but the most general terms. I wasn’t sure this was a good idea, but Melissa seemed to feel it was important.

With a nod, Melissa said, “Well, let me back up a little. When things started happening and we figured out what was going on, my Aunt Jenny came to our house. We lived out of town, maybe five miles, but Aunt Jenny thought we needed to run, go somewhere harder to find, maybe up in the Smokies. She had this big motorhome.”

I thought that might have worked, but you would also cut yourself off from a lot of potential resources. And you never knew who else might be taking refuge in the mountains…if you could even get there.

“Mom wanted to go, but Dad said no, absolutely not. I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was, but it scared me to hear them disagree about it.” Rebecca gestured for Melissa to give her the biscuit plate, and Melissa handed it over. “That word kept coming up—familiar. Dad thought we needed to stay in familiar territory, where we knew the area, the people. Familiar people. And he said nobody who wasn’t familiar with the area was likely to come out our road. Anybody looking to rob or hurt people would stay in town. They wouldn’t come to our house. It wasn’t
familiar
.” Every time she said the word, it had more bitterness in it.

“Melissa, nobody knew what to expect. Leaving might have been a good move, or it might not. We were all just guessing then.” I reached for her hand, but she curled her fingers into her palm and continued.

“Aunt Jenny left, and we stayed, because it was
familiar
. She said if she found a safe place, she’d come for us, and Dad said if things didn’t work out where she was going, she could come back. We’d be fine.” She almost choked on a sob, but held it back. “We were fine, for a few weeks, hiding. We saw some zombies, but we were quiet. If any came near the house, Dad killed them with his hatchet. But then someone did come. Mason and his gang.”

I felt sick now too. “He was sly, calculating,” I said. “He had the abandoned hotel set up within a couple of days of the first outbreak, almost like he’d been planning it.” Maybe he had. “Then he got the supplies he wanted by raiding the warehouse club.” And killing my brother in the process.

“Yeah,” Melissa said. “Guess he ran out of projects in town. So, they found us. Dad was out in the garage when they showed up, way off to one side of the house, getting some gas for our generator.” Her eyes pooled with the recollection. “One of the guys shot him on sight. I’d heard them drive up and was watching out the kitchen window. I saw it happen.”

“Shit, kid, that’s rough.” Soothing and comforting weren’t really Rebecca’s thing, but at least she was trying.

“I…then things get weird, like fuzzy and missing bits. They kicked in the back door, and Mom fought them. I tried to run…she kept screaming at me to run. Run, Melissa. And I ran. I kicked one guy in the knee, and he fell, and I ran.”

This time I grabbed her hand, whether she wanted me to or not. Her voice was becoming more childlike, she was repeating herself, and I was afraid she was going to become so upset, reliving this, that she might revert to some level of her former voiceless, trance-like state.

“Honey, no. You don’t have to tell us. We can imagine…” Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.

She shook her head, and I saw her force herself to refocus. Definitely not the broken little girl she’d been. “No, Ells, I’m okay. I have to say it all, this one time. If we’re going to leave here, you have to know why it’s what I want, and why we can’t stay.” I nodded, and she went on. “Another guy caught me, and Mason said not to let me go, I think. Something like that. But he wouldn’t let them, um, do anything to me. Said he was saving me for something special.”

When she was quiet for a few seconds, Rebecca guessed the next part. “But not your mom?”

“No,” Melissa confirmed. “Not my mom. Mason said maybe he’d keep her, but he had to check the merchandise. He…he ripped her shirt, ripped it right off. Kept tearing until her shirt and bra were on the floor. Something cut her, a strap or hook, or maybe his nails. She was bleeding, up on her shoulder by the neck.”

Rebecca had been part of the rescue team, the ones who found out about us and rescued us from Mason and his men. The look in her eyes clearly said she was glad she’d gotten to kill some of them, and would happily kill them all over again.

“He touched her,” Melissa said, her voice shifting back to anger. Sick as it was, I took this as a good sign. “He…put his hands all over her, smearing the blood around like finger paint. And he laughed, said maybe she wasn’t bad for an old lady, but he wasn’t sure. He said she’d have to show him what she could do, and I could watch because I’d need a lesson on what to expect later.”

“You couldn’t have stopped him,” I said gently. I was familiar with Mason’s sadistic nature and penchant for blood. I’d been his damned bloody canvas too many times.

“I know that now,” Melissa replied, “but I didn’t then. I started struggling, and the guy hit me. Mom started screaming again and fought like crazy. She caught Mason a good one in the face, and he lost it. He hit her, and she fell. Then…” She swallowed and looked back and forth between Rebecca and me, not speaking until we raised our eyes to hers. “Then he cut her. He took that butterfly knife of his, and he cut her throat.”

Rebecca uttered a soft
fuck
and stood, moving stiffly to the kitchen window.

I couldn’t help it. I was crying, tears silently burning down my cheeks, even if Melissa’s eyes were dry. I flashed back to Mason shooting Matt in the warehouse, and his body sliding to the floor. It was…too much.

“So that’s it,” Melissa said. “We stayed where it was familiar, like as long as we were quiet and patient nothing bad would find us. You can’t get hung up on familiar. You have to think about changing, even if you don’t want to, before you decide what to do. Falling back on familiar just because it feels safe is a sure way to get killed.”

We both stood up then, and I pulled her to me in a tight hug. And finally, she cried. Rebecca stood stiffly a short distance away, looking very much like she needed to kill something. Or several somethings.

Once the tears subsided and faces were mopped, I said, “I get it now, honey. I see why you’re willing to go, and I know how hard it was for you to make that decision.”

Rebecca grabbed her sword sheath and strapped it over her back. She gave Melissa a hearty slap on the shoulder—again, comforting wasn’t really in her skill set—and said, “Well, chicks, it’s about that time. Let’s go find out if we’re hittin’ the road.”

Fifteen minutes later we had our answer. We were leaving the Compound. We were all officially part of fallback team three.

Time for a post-apocalyptic road trip.

CHAPTER FOUR

The four fallback teams were instructed to assemble in different locations around the Compound to meet with their team leaders. Our group was sent to an open area near the east gate. Once used as a stockpile for wall-building supplies, it was now empty enough to easily accommodate us.

Rebecca, who always observed and analyzed every detail of her surroundings, studied the gathering for a moment. “Twenty-five. We’re all here.”

I decided to take her word for it. According to the announcement, there were twenty on our team, and five alternates. I recognized most of the faces present, though I only knew a handful of them very well.

The three of us stood together near one of the remaining stacks of lumber and watched as Marcus Sharpe, our team leader, jumped up to take his position on top of the improvised stage. A solidly-built man of around forty, his close-cropped dark hair had touches of white at the temples. I knew him fairly well in his capacity as a patrol captain, and had been on runs with him myself. I didn’t know a lot about his life before the outbreak, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had included military service. He’d been good to Quinn, I remembered, and that was enough to make me feel satisfied with his role in our team.

Marcus raised his hands to quiet the conversations going on among the small crowd. “Welcome to fallback team three.” He was clearly trying to sound official and serious, but I was sure I detected a glint of excitement in his eyes.

Beside me, Rebecca snorted. “Sounds like a shitty action movie title, don’t it?”

It kind of did.

Marcus swept his gaze over his team. “I’ll hit the highlights first. Number one, some of you might’ve reconsidered since you signed up yesterday morning. And that’s fine. It’s a big decision. If you changed you mind, maybe because someone close to you didn’t make the list, or because you thought it through and came to a different decision, just say so. This ain’t something anybody’s being forced to do, and there’s no shame in stepping out of your place in the team.” A few people shuffled uneasily, but his voice held no amount of condescension. He was very direct and pragmatic.

While Marcus paused to see if anyone had anything to say, a hand slowly raised toward one edge of the crowd. I recognized Roger Boggs, a young guy I’d served with on patrol a couple of times. I thought his job involved the motor pool, or something else mechanical. I didn’t know him well. Marcus nodded, indicating he could speak.

Roger glanced around, nervous, before clearing his throat. “I want to go, Marcus. I do. But…um, Frannie didn’t get picked, and…” His voice trailed off, and he hung his head.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Marcus said. “I told you, I told everybody, no shame in not going. You’re a helluva mechanic, Roger, and you’ll be valuable here. That’s what I got this here list of alternates for.” He held up the paper and spoke to all of us. “Volunteer only, people. Got it?”

Roger nodded, looking slightly better, raised a hand in farewell to Marcus, and left the meeting area.

Marcus studied the list a moment, then seemed to arrive at a decision. “Okay, then. Looks like the alternate with skills closest to Roger is…” He took another quick glance at the paper. “Daisy Simmons, come on down!” he said in his best
Price is Right
imitation. There was a round of chuckles, and a girl with a blonde ponytail sprouting from the top of her head stepped forward. She was absolutely glowing with pride. Looking at the gender mix of our bunch, I was pleased to have at least one more female on the team.

While Marcus was filling the vacancy left by Roger, Melissa had drifted a short distance from my side and was whispering excitedly with Faith Campbell. Faith’s mother, Jocelyn, was also part of the team, and I assumed she’d be managing our kitchen, since she’d been a key figure in the Compound’s kitchen from the beginning. Faith was also seventeen, so she and Melissa were close friends. I was thrilled the two girls wouldn’t be separated.

My attention was pulled from Melissa and her friend by a sharp finger-poke to my ribs. I turned to find Theo grinning at me. “Hey, Hale, glad to see we get to keep working together.”

“Me too, Theo.” I gave him a nudge with my shoulder. I truly was happy to see him. He’d taught me to fight, and he was a good friend. Sometimes I thought he hoped for something more, and I couldn’t say I hadn’t given it some thought, but the ghost of Quinn hovered between us, making us both uncertain.

It was soon time to get back to business. “Anybody else?” Marcus asked. “No? Well, the plan is to leave in three days. We’ll be organizing and doing a little training until then, but if you change your mind at any point, just say so. We had plenty of volunteers, and if you feel better about working here instead of…somewhere else, that’s the way it’ll be.”

“Where we gonna be headed?” The deep, gravelly voice belonged to Neil Richmond, the fiftyish man in charge of the livestock. I knew him from Melissa’s work there. And I blamed him for the goats.

Marcus nodded to acknowledge the question before dropping to sit on the edge of the platform. “That’s the thing, Neil. The council knows where the teams are going, and the team leaders know where their team is going. But other than the two escorts accompanying each group, nobody else gets to know until we’re on the road.”

There were murmurs and grumbles all around, and I glanced at Rebecca, who shrugged. I guessed it made sense. If the teams knew now, it was a sure thing the whole Compound would know before lunch. The fewer people who were aware of the location of the fallback points, the less chance the information could fall into the hands of the enemy, either through a spy or a captured resident.

“Then how do we know what to pack up?” Neil asked.

“We’ll be discussing that here in a minute. But first—” Whatever Marcus had been about to say was interrupted by a bell ringing from the east gate, signifying an attack.

Everybody froze, listening to the pattern of the bell’s peals. The number and timing of the rings told us what we were facing. After a moment, I mentally decoded the alarm to indicate a moderate swarm of zombies, single location.

Marcus had apparently interpreted the signal too, and barked into the walkie-talkie he pulled from his belt. “All posts, I have a team in the vicinity. We’ll cover it.” He re-holstered the device and turned to us. “All right, boys and girls, let’s clean up this mess and get back to business. Meet back here one hour after the all-clear.”

“About fuckin’ time.” Rebecca whipped her sword out of the sheath on her back. She’d been inside the walls for nearly a week since her last patrol, and she had a lot of pent-up aggression to unleash.

I drew my machete. “Melissa,” I said, calling her attention to me. “You and Faith stay up on the wall. Be our eyes.” The girls could fight, if they had to. Anyone who went outside the walls had to be able to defend themselves. Melissa had a hatchet with a modified longer handle, and she was a pretty good shot with an arrow. But within the Compound, there was no need for them to be put at risk. If the swarm turned out to be more than we could handle, there were plenty of seasoned fighters within shouting distance.

We raced to the east gate, while Melissa and Faith clambered up the ladder to the guard tower. The two men currently on watch brought us up to speed. “Forty or fifty,” one told us. “Came from the logging road on the north side of the clearing, not moving fast, but clustered tight and coming steady.”

Marcus gave a terse nod, and we were out the gate, which was secured behind us. We fanned out before the advancing zombies, automatically pairing off with fighters we knew. Rebecca and I drifted to the right, angled slightly away from each other to widen our collective range of vision.

“We got this,” my partner said confidently, tucking her braid down the back of her shirt and giving her sword a practice swing.

This pack of zombies was a mixed one. There were some that seemed—for lack of a better word—fresher, and those moved a little faster than the ones with more wear and tear on their bodies. Funny how missing a foot or having a knee bent the wrong way slowed you down, even if you were already dead.

I selected my first target, a woman with half her scalp missing, and the remaining strands of steel-colored hair trailing down over the shoulder of a tattered and gore-encrusted knit poncho. I didn’t think the garment had been stylish even when its owner was alive. Gave a whole new meaning to “I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that.” I swung my machete, putting an end forever to her final fashion faux pas.

I was methodical, stepping around fallen corpses and acquiring target after target, but Rebecca was a whirlwind. Her sword flashed again and again, and the zombies in our section were soon eliminated.

My eyes sweeping the battlefield, I saw Theo about thirty feet to our left. He seemed to have misplaced his battle-buddy, and had his hands full with five zombies, all of which seemed determined to put him on their lunch menu. We moved over to join the fight.

“Thanks,” he panted between swings of his machete. He had enormous upper body strength and preferred a weapon resembling a broadsword, but it was too big to be practical to haul around unless he knew he was headed into battle.

“Where’s your buddy?” I asked, dispatching a formerly middle-aged man in a striped golf shirt. Black, rotted blood burst from the top of his ruined skull.

Theo jerked his head toward far side of the field. “Few more came out of the trees. Sent him over to assist.” Rebecca leaned over a fallen—but not yet permanently dead—zombie at her feet. She plunged the point of her sword into its eye until we heard it grind against the back of the skull. She jerked the blade free and glanced around. “Looks about done here,” she commented.

She was right. But as I scanned the area where Theo had sent his partner, things weren’t going so well. I heard Melissa shout, “More coming, over there!”

I looked where she was pointing. Yeah, we should go help, but I wasn’t sure we’d be in time. I saw three men, one of whom was Theo’s partner, almost surrounded. We watched the drama unfold as we ran.

A tall, thin young man was swinging wildly with a spiked bat, but there were three zombies focused on him. Theo’s partner and another man were helping hold them off when they could, but they had attackers of their own to take down.

We were still a good forty feet away when the guy caught a foot on something in the grass and went down. Adrenaline flooded my system, and my sprint kicked up a notch. Theo’s partner saw the other fighter’s dilemma and whirled to come to his aid. He took down two deadlies with consecutive blows of his hatchet. When the hatchet slipped from his grasp, he let it go and drew a dagger from his belt, but then seemed to stumble. He staggered, fighting for balance, but there was a zombie body in the way, and he fell. I watched in horror as he braced his arms for the impact, but his dagger led the way and embedded itself deeply in the thigh of the guy on the ground.

The young man let out a howl, and Theo’s partner scrambled to his feet, pulling the weapon from its fleshy sheath and turning to face the remaining zombies, which were closing in.

“No!” shouted Theo. “What are you doing? You don’t pull it out!”

His friend swung, puncturing one zombie’s skull, then turned to face Theo. “What? Oh. Oh god!” He looked down to where the other man was curled on the ground, hands clutching at the wound on his thigh, blood gushing between his fingers.

Theo arrived at the scene and pointed to me and Rebecca with his free hand, then toward the remaining fight. “Go!”

We went, while he knelt beside the man writhing in the grass.

Luckily, the rest of the team had things well in hand, and in a few minutes we had eliminated the last straggler. We ran back to Theo and the injured man. He was being lifted, one arm over Marcus’ shoulder and the other over Theo’s. Theo’s partner had the uninjured leg, and Davey, one of our best hunters, held the other. They carried him in a semi-reclining position across the field. An Asian man—I thought his name was John—was running alongside, one hand clamped tightly over the bloody wound.

We all reached the wall and were met by Vincent Mills, the doctor assigned to our team. He’d been left at the gate, because while we could train almost anyone in any skill, doctors were an exception. We didn’t have the facilities or resources, let alone the time, to teach anyone what an experienced doctor already knew, so doctors were protected at all costs. He directed the men toward a tarp someone had spread in the shade of a pair of oak trees, his medical bag already placed nearby.

Dr. Mills and his assistant Lisa quickly cut away the leg of the man’s jeans and went to work. “Nice job,” he said to John. “How’d you know to pinch off that artery?”

John shrugged. “Not the first wound I’ve seen.”

“Well, you probably saved his life,” the doctor said, sweat beading on his mahogany skin.

Meanwhile, Theo’s partner was hovering. “God, oh hell, Isaac,” he said to the injured man. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking! I mean, I fell, but I pulled it out. There were more of them, and…Man, I shouldn’t have done it that way. You could’ve died.”

He was right, but I couldn’t say I blamed him. When zombies were closing in, intent on ripping out your guts, the only thought was to get your hands on a weapon. If he hadn’t armed himself, even though it risked Isaac’s life, they might have both been dead before Theo, Rebecca, and I could reach them.