The Fall (Book 5): Exodus in Black (15 page)

Mason popped up from behind the twisted wreck of a Rebound vehicle and fired. He ducked again and circled around, trying to keep out of sight of enemies so he could find the next target.

The first minute after the lines of trucks collided hadn’t been pretty. Even low-speed collisions were disastrous for people not wearing seat belts, and the Rebound crew had men riding in the backs of  their trucks. When they had begun boiling out of the crashed vehicles, nearly half had obvious injuries. The quick put down covering fire as they spread out. Those slowed by injury were killed without mercy or hesitation.

He didn’t make the mistake of underestimating the enemy. It took professionalism for an outnumbered force to keep fighting when half they took such an enormous hit. Mason felt for them, strange as it seemed. He knew the rising terror that came with any losing battle and the grit it took to stay on mission without flipping your shit.

And they were losing. Mason would have given the enemy the edge before seeing how disastrous that crash had been for them. As it was now, the remaining soldiers kept moving around the edges of the four lanes of highway that made up the rough square they fought in. The darkness helped, but it could only go so far.

A bullet twanged off the side of the vehicle he crouched next to. Mason threw himself to the side and raised his rifle at the same time, sending a burst toward the muzzle flash. Another burst as he righted himself and darted back the way he’d come.

He thought he’d gotten lucky and actually hit the shooter since no more bullets rattled against the metal behind him. Then he heard distant cursing roughly where he’d been shooting, followed by a shout.

“Fucking hell! Zombies!”

“Surprised it took that long,” Mason muttered to himself. The bypass was a big, well-traveled road. Zombie herds along its length wouldn’t stay away from the smell of humans for longer than it would take to get to them. Gunfire would attract them from much farther away, like moths to flames.

“If you surrender, we’ll protect you,” Mason shouted, surprising himself.

The sound of muffled argument echoed across the road before cutting off suddenly. Then: “We can take care of ourselves.”

“I can see that,” Mason said, pitching his voice to carry. “But you’re going to have to turn your backs on us to defend yourselves. If you fire those guns, it’ll make it easier for us to find and shoot you while you’re busy. You could make a run for us and take your chances, but I have to tell you I don’t think they look good. There are more of us. We’ll cut you down.”

Hopefully that was true. There were more bodies on the ground not wearing the black tactical gear favored by Rebound than he would have liked. Any at all was more than he wanted, but in terms of fighting strength, there was no way to know if the fight would be as decisive as he made it sound.

Which was part of why he made the offer loudly. It was a clear signal to the enemy what would happen to them, and told the militia what to do. Will would never allow shabby, substandard people in his defense force, so Mason wasn’t worried they’d miss the hint.

A long few seconds passed before a deep voice cut through the night. “This is Emery. Stand down. We’re surrendering.”

Mason raised his own voice. “Drop your weapons, raise your hands, and move toward the RV. I strongly recommend against so much as scratching your nose.”

They came from all sides in more of a hurry than Mason would have expected. Then again, being shot was a pleasant death relative to being shredded alive and eaten. He kept his rifle up and ready as the soldiers from the north side of the road approached with arms extended straight up.

Militia members corralled them in short order by working in teams. Four women—scouts, he thought—trained weapons on the captives as two men checked for hidden weapons before zip-cuffing hands together.

The zombies appeared less than thirty feet behind, a narrow wall of pale flesh forty feet wide. “Fire left!” Mason shouted, ordering the men to start picking off the targets on that side first. He wanted to keep guard on the captives, the last of which were showing up on the south side now, but there was no telling how many undead would descend on this patch of ground.

So he switched his selector to semi-automatic, took aim, and fired right.

Mason killed six zombies before his weapon went dry. It was bizarre to be using firearms against them. Bullets weren’t as rare as they had once been thanks to the number of growing industries communities were able to create, but neither were they wasted. It had been so long since he’d fired a gun at a zombie that his brain rebelled against the idea. That didn’t stop him from snatching up a fallen shotgun and emptying it as well.

Unfortunately, that was just the first wave. More zombies began to appear from the woods in small clusters. Mason didn’t know how much ammunition they had on hand, but it wasn’t infinite.

He jogged toward the rear of the RV, where the prisoners were being kept. He waved a hand at one of the militia guards standing there. “Hey, did you guys bring any hand to hand weapons?”

The guard didn’t look away from his charges, but screwed his face up in thought. “Look in the red truck. I’m pretty sure it has a rack on the back window of the cab.”

Mason thanked him and jogged off.

One brief rummage later, Mason walked toward the thickening herd of zombies with a smile on his face and pair of batons in his hands. Two years of hardcore Arnis training had come in much more handy than he ever expected. The batons were aluminum and thicker than the traditional rattan or bamboo, but since he wasn’t using them against someone else flailing about with the things, it wouldn’t be a problem.

It was an interesting reflection on human thinking that, after thousands of years of technological evolution, in a pinch the most common weapon people fell back on was one variation or another of a stick.

“Do we have backup coming?” he asked, pausing by a militiaman with a machete. “We don’t have the wheels to get everyone home.”

The man nodded. “Standard procedure when we’re running any kind of operation at a distance is to have a bus follow behind. They’ll be able to follow our signals. One of the scouts is going to ride back just in case, though.”

Mason raised an eyebrow. “Must ruin a lot of vehicles to justify burning that much fuel.”

The militiaman grunted a humorless laugh. “No, but most of the time when we’re more than ten miles from home it’s to run down marauders. And they usually have a lot of useful stuff.”

If it seemed like a consideration so practical it bordered on cutthroat, well, it was a cutthroat kind of world.

There was a world of difference between what ten men with guns could do to a zombie swarm and what five men with melee weapons could. Firearms were efficient and powerful, but a man with a baseball bat was right in the thick of it, causing chaos and distracting the zombies. The man with the bat—or in Mason’s case, baton—gave the zombie a close target. He drew attention. Firearms were distance weapons. Useful as they were, the batons didn’t run out of bullets.

Mason focused on slowing the herd as much as possible. He did kill the first zombie he came to, which only had one arm, but mostly to use its body as an obstacle. The whistling tip of the baton cracked its skull like an egg. Mason tucked his batons beneath his arm and dragged the dead man by his arm, slinging it at the feet of two more zombies about to close in on another fighter. When they looked down to avoid tripping, the fighter brought his baseball bat down on a skull.

Mason kept moving. They all did. Zombies ran the gamut from slow to murderously quick, and you never knew whether they’d surprise you with a sudden burst of speed. When the undead began to clump up too near the kneeling mass of prisoners, he put himself between and fought like nine kinds of hell to draw the zombies away again.

The fight fell into an almost hypnotic rhythm. Fighters peeled off for short breaks and were replaced by others. When the zombies drifting in from the woods grew in numbers, so did the defenders. No one had to give orders. There weren’t any moments where anyone was overwhelmed. Half a decade of practice by necessity had forged each of them into something the world hadn’t needed for hundreds of years; expert hand to hand fighters with an instinctive reaction to protect each other.

The age of the gun had slowly driven swordsmen to extinction just as the proliferation of other weapons had for phalanxes of spearmen. The risen dead had, in a cute twist of irony, also resurrected the Spartan mentality.

“Ride’s here,” someone called out. Mason stepped away and created some distance between him and the swarm before risking a look.

The bus was rolling up the hill, engine chugging along. He’d been so absorbed in the fight he hadn’t even noticed.

“Start getting the prisoners ready,” he said to whoever was relaying orders.

“Uh, Emily already told us what to do,” said one of the men guarding the prisoners.

Mason grinned. “You should listen to her. She’s scary.”

“She wants you to come in,” the man said. “Your friend is hurt.”

“Okay,” Mason said, then turned to face the people dancing between zombies. “We’re going to start pulling back in a minute. Be ready.”

To a person, they nodded acknowledgment. Mason let his arms fall to his sides, and trudged off.

Upon entering the RV, he was taken aback by how bad Kell looked. The man’s dark skin was ashen, and despite to cool air he was sweating buckets.

Beth, who was huddled over Kell, looked up. Her eyes fell to Mason’s hands and with an excited laugh she grabbed the batons. Mason watched in fascination as she added them to the existing splints already supporting his leg, which contained what looked like every inch of gauze in the place. And more; one of Mason’s gray shirts was wrapped up in there, too.

“How bad is it?” Mason asked.

Kell exhaled hard before he spoke, as if trying to clear his throat but not finding the strength. “Bad. We tried standing me up a few minutes ago. It isn’t happening.”

Beth frowned worriedly. “It’s a damn miracle the arteries in his lower leg weren’t shredded, but I don’t think the bones connecting his foot to his knee are, you know, connecting them any more.”

“Tibia and fibula,” Kell said in a surprisingly casual tone.

“What?” Beth said, tilting her head.

“The bones not connecting my foot and knee. They’re the tibia and fibula.”

Beth stared at him in stunned amazement. “Your leg is hanging on by tatters, and you’re taking the time to correct me about anatomy? Really?”

Mason burst out laughing. It went on for a long time, to the point his ribs ached and tears streamed down his face. He regained control of himself and wiped the tears away. “I’m sorry, but that was fantastic. Classic, really. I mean, if a man’s gonna have his floppy leg talked about, it has to be with the medical Latin, right?”

“Are you okay, man?” Kell asked. “You seem a little jittery.”

Mason waved him away. “I’m fine. When I brought you in here I knew it was going to be a rough night, so I raided my stash.” When Kell stared at him blankly, Mason walked over and opened a cabinet. “Stimulants. I don’t remember what kind, but they’re some sort of amphetamine. Emergency use only, but they did the trick.” He pulled out the small baggie and gave it a little shake.

“It’s powder,” Beth observed. “Sure you didn’t just do a whole bunch of coke?”

“Nah, Judith put this together for me,” Mason said. “I’ve only had to use it once before. Don’t worry about walking, Kell. I can carry you to whatever vehicle we’re going to use, if Beth will keep your foot stable.”

Five minutes later, a huge man covered in scars, high as a park’s worth of kites, carried another huge man like a blushing bride to the back of a pickup truck.

They laughed about it later.

Everyone was at the clinic, either at Kell’s side or helping with the wounded from the battle. Emily wanted to be there with him, to hold his hand if only because she knew how long he’d gone without even the small touches. She wanted to take strength from him, because wasn’t that what relationships were about? Finding that alchemical reaction when both were weak and somehow discovering new strength in each other?

But no. She had a job to do first.

“We’ve been here for hours,” Mike said, slightly annoyed, when she entered the hangar.

She walked to him and without breaking stride punched him in the side of his face as hard as she could.

The stunned boy toppled off the picnic table, stunned. Randy bolted to his feet and seemed torn between helping his friend and going after the one who’d hurt him.

“Better kill me with the first shot, son,” Emily said. “I’m not in the mood to be nice. And you, get up. That was a love tap to let you know I don’t care how bothered you are by having to wait.”

She let him get up, murder in his eyes, and waited for him to sit back down.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t care what happens to either of you from now on. I really don’t want you to mistake what I mean. I literally wouldn’t give a shit if you both died right here in front of me. If anything I’d feel a little safer without two dipshits like you putting everyone else at risk.”

Randy opened his mouth to speak, but Emily raised a finger.

“You have one—and
only
one—chance to come clean with me. If you lie to me, we’re done. For good. And you’re done here at Haven. I will make it my life’s only fucking goal to ensure you’re thrown out on your asses to fend for yourselves. I want you to nod if you understand, and believe that what I’m saying is true.”

Both boys nodded, Randy a little faster than Mike, who was rubbing his already-swelling jaw.

“You went to live inside Haven,” Emily said, her voice dead calm. “Right after, Kell was taken. No one outside our group knew what we were doing, and if they suspected, they had no idea how far along we were. One or both of you left here and started running your mouths, didn’t you?”

Mike worked his jaw, testing its function with a deep wince. “No. Maybe they were watching you guys do the tests or something, because we didn’t say a word.”

Emily stared at him for a long time before looking to Randy.

“He’s wrong,” Randy said in a small voice. “But I don’t think he’s lying.”

Inside her, twin mountains of rage rose up. One was hot, boiling. It urged her to scream and fight, to mindlessly lash out in any and every way. The other was the more familiar cold, a deep rage that begged to know exactly who would miss these two. “Explain.”

Mike was now staring at Randy in what Emily read as genuine confusion. Randy’s head dropped into his hands. “This place has a bar, did you know? We’re adults, so they let us in, and I traded a few things for a pint of whiskey. Mike drank most of it. He started talking to the bartender. She was asking if we were new, since she hadn’t seen us before. That kind of thing.”

Emily regarded him flatly. “I imagine the place was crowded?”

“Yeah,” Randy said. “Mike said we’d been living here,” he gestured at the Hangar, “but that we decided to move out on our own. When the bartender asked why you all lived outside Haven, he said it was because you were working on something big that had just been finished.”

“What are you talking about?” Mike said. “I don’t remember any of this.”

But Emily heard it in his voice. The first glimmers of doubt as Randy’s story struck on some memory obscured by booze.

“Kell is hurt” Emily said simply. “His leg is hanging on by threads. He’s in surgery now.”

She watched their reactions. There was guilt in their eyes, which she thought said more about Randy than it did Mike. Randy had only allowed his friend to speak, but the guilt of not stopping him from doing so was at least as obvious as Mike’s.

“He’s going to live,” she continued. “That much looks as certain as it can. But you should know that Haven lost eleven men and women tonight.”

Randy’s mouth twisted into a horrified grimace. Mike only stared dumbly at her. She saw tears in the eyes of the first, but nothing in the second.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Emily asked Mike. “Are you in shock, or do you just not give a shit?”

Mike blanched. “I mean, I talked to a woman. I’m sorry for Kell and those people, but I didn’t kill them. I didn’t hurt him.”

Emily bit the inside of her mouth to stop herself from killing him right there. “That bartender or someone in the room was a Rebound agent. Or they spread the rumor to a Rebound agent. Because you opened your mouth about something you
knew
was being kept tightly secret, it cost eleven good people their lives. That’s on you. That is your goddamn fault.”

Mike began to protest as Randy hung his head and buried his fingers in his hair again. Emily backed away, afraid she was going to lost control.

“Did you get all that?” she asked loudly. Mike looked at her in confusion.

“I got it,” Will Price answered as he stepped through the cracked door leading outside. “We all got it.” Behind him, half a dozen militia stood with grim expressions. “We’ll have the trial tomorrow, if you want to come.”

“Do I have to?” Emily asked.

Will shook his head. “No. I can speak for you. I heard their confession.”

“Confession?” Mike asked stupidly.

Emily walked away, sick to her stomach. Whatever punishment came down on them, it wouldn’t be enough. Nothing could make up for the consequences of those few words.

Later.

She sat next to Kell’s bed, feet crossed and extended as she reclined in the world’s least comfortable folding chair. He slept, not with the beatific and careless smile of someone lost in the pleasant void of unconsciousness, but looking haggard and worn out. Lined. Even in sleep he frowned slightly, as if his resting mind could not let go of something it knew to be wrong.

There was no question what that was; Kell’s left leg ended six inches below his knee.

“He’s going to be okay,” Mason said quietly. “With a decent prosthetic and some practice, he’ll eventually have full mobility.”

Emily, staring at the ceiling, gave him a disbelieving chuckle. “You say that like those things just grow on trees.”

“He’ll get one,” Mason said, his voice intense. “There are tens of thousands of people spread across the Union and its allies. The UAS has those bunkers down south. Someone out there knows how to make them. If I have to go out and find them myself, I will.”

He said it in that uniquely Mason way. That total certainty so thorough it was hard to doubt him. When the man focused on a thing, he made the thing happen. “Thank you,” she said.

Mason nodded. “He’s my friend, too, Em. I’m old and grizzled enough to know better than to take responsibility for things I have no control over, but I can’t help feeling like this is my fault. At least some of it.”

“No,” she said sharply. “You did more than anyone to try to straighten those boys out. You tried to make them understand how important watching out for each other was. This isn’t on you. Or me. None of us. They made their choice, and they’ll be punished for it.”

Mason looked at the void where Kell’s calf had been. “Is it wrong that I feel worse for what happened to him than for the people we lost?”

The words were soft, plaintive. The earnestness of them went through Emily like an arrow. A flash of understanding hit her.

Mason had surely dealt with psychiatrists and evaluations aplenty during his military service and after. He knew the intellectual answer to the question. But all the years of moral relativism, making hard calls and doing objectively terrible things for what he considered to be good reasons, it had knocked the edges off his judgment. It didn’t quite fit.

Any man who sees horrors often enough will become numb to them. A man who commits them can only keep his moral compass steady for so long before he starts to question its direction.

“It’s not wrong,” Emily assured him. “You know it. You just need to hear someone else say it.”

Mason, still looking at the missing piece, inclined his head.

“So listen to me and remember this,” she said. “Those people were soldiers. They died doing their job. Even if they didn’t know they were saving the cure, they went out and did the work. Because it was their duty. Just like you or me. They made the choice.”

She sighed. “That’s what the shrinks would have told you. It’s true enough. But really, on a much more fundamental level, it’s okay because you didn’t know them. You weren’t invested the way you are with Kell. They were strangers, and you don’t feel their loss because there wasn’t any history between you. You can mourn their loss for what they did, what they represent, but it’s not on you to grieve them the way their families will. There’s no shame in it. It’s just how things are.”

Mason stood and stretched. “If it’s okay, I’m going to head back and try to sleep. I’m coming down off those drugs pretty hard.”

Emily smiled. “Eat something before you crash. I’ll be here all night.”

Mason winked trotted off, leaving Emily alone with Kell for the first time all day.

“He needs some time off,” she said to herself. “Time to recover and be a person again.”

“No kidding,” Kell said.

Emily jumped. He snickered.

“You two are louder than you think,” he murmured. “Also, my leg itches like a son of a bitch. The one that isn’t there, I mean.”

“I’m sorry, babe, but I don’t know what to do about that.”

“I do,” he said. “I don’t think we have a mirror box laying around, though.” When her brows lowered in bewilderment, he smiled. “I’ll explain in the morning. I’m too tired right now. Want to crawl up here with me?”

“Aren’t you worried I’ll hurt you?”

“Eh. Just stay on my right and don’t kick me in the stump, and we’ll be kosher.” He scooted over.

Emily nearly purred at how comfortable it was. “Thanks. I think that chair was supposed to be used in a Turkish prison.” She nestled her head against his chest, and he tightened his arm around her. “How are you doing? You joke, but I can’t imagine.”

She felt him shrug beneath her. “It’s weird, you know? We talk about losing a piece of ourselves in the abstract, like when someone dies. But I lost an actual piece and maybe it just hasn’t really set in yet, but it feels okay. Not ideal. But I’m not mourning it. I know a lot of people do. Just feels like it could have been so much worse. I’m free, when I could have been taken. I have you when I could be alone.”

It made sense to her in a very Kell sort of way. He was sentimental for people, but not for things. His mind was more inclined to be interested in discovering first hand what living without a limb was like. Oh, he’d swear and bitch when he forgot there wasn’t a foot there and fell on his face, but Emily was willing to bet that any sadness or mourning he might do would be brief. He had a world to save, after all.

She opened her mouth to tell him as much, but he was already fast asleep.