“I’ll talk to Ashley and Dante.”
He stood up. “I’m not going to be 100 percent for a while. That doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice you and your daughter’s safety to take care of me.”
“You know I won’t do that. I’ll do anything before I ever do that. Ashley is my life.”
“Good. So you know what you have to do.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Zoe…”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say anything else.”
Zoe walked over to him.
“Zoe,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, before she kissed him on the lips, then turned and hurried out of the room.
Cole looked after her in silence.
“Well, that was unexpected,” the Voice said even as it laughed hysterically inside his head.
But it wasn’t wrong. Cole had not seen that coming.
Chapter Sixteen
Bolton was waiting for him on the rooftop, having come topside to prep his helicopter for takeoff. Cole was surprised the pilot had been so agreeable about this little mission of theirs, but maybe he underestimated just how much Bolton hated the idea of having a nigh-close-to-being-empty tank of gas.
He was still thinking about that kiss with Zoe— No, not with Zoe, by Zoe.
“What’s the difference?” the Voice asked.
There’s a difference.
“Wanna fill me in?”
No.
The Voice laughed. “As if you can hide your innermost thoughts from me. Have you forgotten where I live, chum?”
Don’t remind me.
“I have to. That’s my job, remember?”
In your opinion.
“In both of our opinions, since I’m you, and you’re me. See how that works?”
I can’t win, can I?
“Of course not. So why do you keep arguing with me?”
Cole sighed. He would have thought that after all this time he would get used to it roaming around inside his head, privy to everything that crossed his mind, and knowing everything he thought but didn’t say. Or, in many cases, couldn’t say. The Voice was a constant—one of the few in his life—that he thought he’d gotten rid of, but it’d only been lying dormant.
Waiting, waiting for the right time to pop up and ruin his life.
“Oh, now that hurts my feelings.”
I doubt it.
“Hey, I have feelings.”
Since when?
“Since forever.”
Cole grunted. “Oh, shut up.”
“You talking to me?”
Cole turned around to find Dante sitting in his wheelchair just inside the room. The kid was looking at him strangely.
“No,” Cole said.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good, because for a moment there I thought I’d gotten on your bad side without realizing it.” He grinned. “One of the reasons why I thought you might be trying to get rid of us.”
“‘Us?’”
“Me, Zoe, and Ashley. Not so much Cameron. I don’t think you like him very much. I don’t blame you; I don’t, either. Kinda an asshole, if you ask me. Then again, my opinion of him might be cloudy just a tad. He did try to throw me off the chopper.”
Cole turned around to look at Dante. “He what?”
Dante chuckled. “Back when we’d just left Anton’s. I think ol’ Cameron thought I might be a liability.” The teen smirked. “Wonder what would ever give him that idea?”
Cole smiled, then turned back around. “I’m glad he didn’t.”
“Me too.”
Cole picked up the SIG Sauer pistol from the table where he’d laid it down after cleaning it and the other weapons. Everything looked to be in good shape, signs that Cameron’s crew had taken care of them—or maybe whoever was in charge of them back at the base before they were grabbed by the survivors—but you could never be sure. Better safe than sorry.
“I’m not trying to get rid of you guys,” Cole said.
“No?” Dante said. “Sure feels that way.”
“It’s not. It’s just better this way for everyone.”
Dante tapped one of his wheelchair’s wheels. “You must be happy; don’t have to deal with me and this contraption anymore.”
“I didn’t say that, Dante.”
“You don’t have to. Not that I blame ya. I mean, who wants a cripple running around? Or, er, rolling around?”
“He’s got a point,” the Voice said.
I thought I told you to shut up?
“Since when have I done what you wanted?”
Good point.
The Voice cackled.
Cole said out loud, “You’ve been more of an asset than a liability.”
The kid didn’t answer right away. Apparently, Cole’s words had caught him by surprise.
“He’s not the only one,” the Voice said.
Cole ignored it and said, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re not useful. We wouldn’t have survived this long without you.”
The kid chuckled. “Now I know you’re just being silly.”
“I’m not.”
“Tell me one thing I did that was worth dragging my sorry butt around everywhere.”
“Lunchables.”
“Lunchables?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. What else?”
“You need something else?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I don’t.”
“No?”
Cole shook his head. “No.” He turned back around, then walked over and stuck his hand out toward the kid. “Watch out for the girls. They’re your responsibility now.”
Dante nodded somberly. He shook Cole’s hand with a determined look in his eyes that Cole had never seen before. “I will. You got my word, boss.”
“Good. I’m counting on you.”
“What’re you gonna do after this side trip with Bolton?”
“Look for Emily.”
“I hope you find her.”
“I will.” He nodded at the teenager, forcing as much conviction as he could muster, “I’ll find her.”
The others were busy, which was for the best. Zoe and her daughter were on the first floor. Along with Cameron, the trio was moving their things from the warehouse into the APC. Cole wasn’t very surprised that the ex-soldier had decided to tag along with the newcomers. Cole would have done the same in his army boots. They weren’t going to leave right away; Deke and the others wanted to spend the night in the building first, to stretch their legs after the last few days of constantly being on the move inside their vehicle. The APC was much roomier than your average car, but it was still sleeping inside a car.
As he walked along the catwalk toward the other side of the warehouse to reach the rooftop access, Cole thought he could feel eyes on him. Maybe Zoe, or Ashley, or Cameron. Probably not Cameron. The former soldier couldn’t care less about where Cole went next or why.
“Turn around and find out,” the Voice said.
He kept walking.
“Don’t be afraid.”
He wasn’t afraid. It was just better this way.
“Smells like fear to me.”
You’re wrong.
“Am I?”
Yes.
“I don’t think so.”
You think too much. That’s the problem.
The Voice laughed. “I’m only thinking things that you want to say, chum. Don’t shoot the messenger.”
Cole adjusted the tactical pack over his back and shifted the carbine around. The rifle, along with the sidearm, came with extra magazines and two boxes of bullets. He was also carrying supplies that Deke’s group had been kind enough to offer. Cole didn’t say no and neither did Bolton.
He was still surprised the old pilot had decided to go back to
Anton’s warehouse with him once they refueled the Bell at the nearby airstrip.
“I’m not much for cramming myself into a truck,” the older man had said.
“It’s an APC,” Cole had said.
“Same difference. I prefer being up there.”
“You could still go with them. Follow along from the sky.”
“I’d have to come down sooner or later.”
“You’d have to do that anyway.”
Bolton had shaken his head. “It’s about the freedom, kid.”
That was all Bolton had said on the subject, which was good enough for Cole. The truth was, he needed the pilot more than the other man needed him, so Cole was thankful he had a ride back to Anton’s. Bolton hadn’t said what he would do after that—whether he would stick around or head off immediately. Cole hadn’t asked. Right now, the goal was to return to the site where he last saw Emily. Everything after that would depend entirely on what he found.
“Or not find,” the Voice said.
I’ll find something.
“You hope.”
I will.
“Keep telling yourself that. Oh wait, you already are,” it said, laughing.
The Voice was wrong. Cole couldn’t afford to think that way. He had to believe there would be something left that the others had missed. After all, they wouldn’t have known what they were looking for. Not that he did, but Cole had more incentive to find something. Anything.
He was still feeling eyes on his back as he climbed up the stairs to the rooftop. His boots clanged loudly against the metal steps, drowning out the voices from the first floor below.
Someone laughed. It sounded like Zoe. Or it might have been Ashley. All he had to do to find out for sure was to stop for a second and look back.
He kept climbing.
“Chicken shit,” the Voice said.
It was windy on the rooftop, a chilly breeze ripping at Cole’s face just as he stepped through the access door, the gravel crunching underneath his boots. He turned right, feeling rough pebbles flicking off his pants legs as he did so. There were clouds above him, and the sky had turned a ghostly gray.
“Storm’s coming,” the Voice said.
Looks like it.
“Is it safe to be flying in a storm?”
It’s not here yet.
“But is it safe?”
Depends on how bad of a storm it is, Cole thought, wondering if Bolton, who had been up here for the past hour prepping his chopper, had noticed the approaching conditions. But of course he had; it wasn’t like you could miss the winds and darkening sky.
It was odd coming up here and not seeing Cameron perched on one of the rooftop edges. Cole was so used to seeing the kid that not having a guard on constant alert made him slightly hesitant. Not that there was any reason to be. They were two floors up, and the crazies hadn’t shown an ability to climb yet. Or if they could, they hadn’t done it for fear of getting shot. That, or expose themselves to others. Infected or not, the crazies weren’t stupid.
The Bell sat in the same spot as all the other days, waiting about twenty meters on the other side of the roof. Cole walked over to it. He could see Bolton already inside the cockpit, leaning over the instruments.
“She good to go?” Cole shouted over, raising his voice slightly over the rising wind.
Bolton didn’t answer him.
“Bolton!” Cole said.
Again, the pilot ignored him. Cole was pretty sure the older man could hear him despite the slight wind. If the chopper’s rotors were already running and the engine was blaring, then Cole could understand why Bolton didn’t hear his query.
“How rude,” the Voice said. “Chopper pilots. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Amirite?”
Cole was halfway to the chopper when he noticed that Bolton hadn’t moved at all. At first, Cole thought the man was leaning over his aircraft’s front equipment, doing whatever it was that pilots did in preparation for a flight, except…
…he wasn’t moving.
And hadn’t moved since Cole spotted him. Bolton wasn’t so much leaning forward in his seat as he was draped over it.
…draped over it…
“Bolton!” Cole shouted, his right hand moving toward his holstered sidearm as he did so. With his left, he clenched onto one of the backpack’s straps, very well aware of its life-saving contents.
Cole was five meters from the chopper when he saw sunlight glinting off bright wetness along the front cockpit’s windshield.
Blood.
It was blood.
A lot of it.
Cole unslung the backpack and ran forward, ignoring the pain that shot up both legs from the sudden movement. He pushed on. Bolton hadn’t moved since Cole saw him, and there was probably a very good reason for that.
“He’s dead,” the Voice said.
You don’t know that.
“He’s deader than a doorknob.”
You don’t know that!
“Don’t I?”
Cole went around the chopper and toward the opened side hatch—
A flash of white colors as a body lunged out of the aircraft and into him, knocking him back and to the floor. Dozens—or hundreds?—of pieces of sharp gravel pricked every part of his body, but Cole was too busy trying not to lose the gun in his right hand.
“Don’t lose the gun!” the Voice shouted.
Yeah, thanks for that!
The Voice was cackling as Cole looked up at a woman in white jogging clothes, wild black hair cascading around her like some cape. Large eyes, the scleras surrounded by a sea of bloodred, danced in the sunlight, even as cracked and bleeding pale lips twisted into a malicious snarl.
It was the same woman from the alley. The same one that Cole and Cameron had taken shots at. Cole remembered Cameron saying he thought he might have hit her. Cole hadn’t been so sure.
Now, looking up at the woman that had already killed Bolton—Cole knew that because there was fresh blood on her chin and white clothes—he knew for a fact that both he and Cameron had missed.
And now he was going to pay the price for it.
“Look out!” the Voice screamed.
Cole lifted his free left hand toward the woman as a metal rod, one of its ends grinded crudely into a sharp point and red with, in all likelihood, Bolton’s blood, plunged toward him at a dizzying speed.
“Oh, that’s gonna hurt!”
Cole fired the SIG while his right elbow was still buried partially in rooftop gravel. Not that he needed to have aimed, because they were almost face-to-face. Even so, his first shot didn’t land on its intended target—it streaked past the woman’s left cheek, taking a big chunk of flesh along with it. More blood flicked through the air and against Cole’s own cheeks.
But the near-miss had distracted her enough that she had her own near-miss. Cole grunted as the plunging rod grazed his left wrist, nearly going right through it, and instead slammed with an echoing thunk! into the rooftop two inches from Cole’s head. Blood from the small cut flicked at his face, but most of the red stuff was coming from the woman’s eyes as she flung herself side to side above him, grunting like one of the wolves from Anton’s place.
The woman scrambled to pull the rod out of the roof when Cole turned his wrist slightly and pulled the trigger. His second bullet went into her open mouth—not really where he was aiming for, but it was good enough—and exited the back of her skull, spraying blood and bone and hair across the side of Bolton’s chopper in the background.
The woman’s lifeless body flopped off Cole and landed with an unsatisfying thwump on the rooftop next to him.
Cole lay back and stared up at the blackening sky. The wind had picked up noticeably, and his left hand was killing him. He thought he could hear blood dripping from his palm to the gravel. He turned his head slightly to look at the woman.
Bloodred eyes stared back at him accusingly.
Then something wet fell from the sky and hit him in the forehead.
Then another one landed on his cheek, smearing the woman’s blood.
Then into his slightly open mouth as he gasped for breath.
Water.
Raindrops.
The first boom! of thunder, seemingly from the other side of the city. It was followed by another.
Then another.
“Well, that’s not foreboding at all,” the Voice said with its usual laughter.
Cole closed his eyes, trying to figure out what he was going to do now that Bolton was dead and he had no clear path to Anton’s warehouse.
“We’ll think of something, chum,” the Voice said. It sounded uncharacteristically sympathetic, which worried Cole more than just a little.
The Voice laughed, but it didn’t try to deny it.
Chapter Seventeen
“So what are you gonna do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“How are you gonna get back to Anton’s?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, that’s no good.”
“Yeah,” Cole said.
That discussion with Dante had happened an hour ago, and he was just as clueless now as he was then on how to proceed. He still didn’t have a single clue how he was going to reach Anton’s without the helicopter. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; he still had the chopper, just no one to fly it. It was too bad Zoe had never gotten the chance to learn from Bolton.
“You could always hump it,” the Voice said.
Not if he expected to get beyond the city limits. The best he could muster was a few blocks before he was swarmed by crazies. And if this morning had proved anything, it was that the bloodthirsty infected were still out there. Not that he had any doubts, but they sure as hell had reminded him of that fact.
“Patient little cockroaches, aren’t they?” the Voice said.
Yes, they were.
“You could always take the APC.”
No, he couldn’t.
“Why not?”
For one, the people it belonged to (“Doesn’t exactly belong to them, does it?”) wouldn’t just allow him to take it. They had their own plans; ones that didn’t involve him returning to Anton’s and looking for clues to Emily’s whereabouts.
Fall of Man | Book 4 | The Tide Page 13