That, and people didn't stop being people just because the world ended.
Laura and Kate had good things to say about Will, the man in charge, so Kell did his best to keep an open mind as the last few miles rolled away beneath him. He hobbled out of the bedroom to look at Frankfort for the first time, and was taken aback by what he saw.
North Jackson and the areas around it had been deserted, looted, ransacked and piled with debris. Overgrowth was everywhere up north, whole neighborhoods vanishing in the encroaching wilderness. But the old skeleton of the world before was still visible, a reminder to those huddled in the ruins of what they'd lost.
This place was different. There were old cars on the road, but purposeful in their location, slanted in pairs on the embankments so they could be pushed forward to create an angled barrier with the tip of the V pointing toward incoming enemies. Where most places were burdened with unchecked growth, the road leading to New Haven was dotted with stumps on either side. One enormous metal telephone pole loomed, highlighting the lack of smaller wooden ones and the familiar black lines of power and communications wire. The sky seemed oddly empty without them.
The closer to New Haven they came, the tamer the landscape grew. There were low trenches lined with tarps and plastic, most filled with rain water. One of them was being emptied by a bored-looking crew manning a stripped-down fire truck. They waved at the RV as it passed.
Where Kell expected the ubiquitous tall grass, he found bare earth sprinkled with the first sprouts of something bright green. When he commented on it, Evan tilted his head as if Kell were the dumbest person alive. “Clover,” the boy said.
The RV chugged up a slow incline and crested the hill, and New Haven appeared before them. The first impression was that this couldn't have been built since The Fall. A second assessment made him think the place couldn't withstand more than a sparse group of zombies. But as they moved closer, the stark reality of the place set in.
A wall made of stones held together with concrete surrounded the place. The west end had a bevy of shipping containers stacked against the wall, large enough that Kell suspected they formed a hollow square. Sentries patrolled the wall, walking either atop it—unlikely, as it would have to be four or five feet thick to manage the deed—or on catwalks attached to it. Unlike North Jackson, where people rarely left the confines of the main complex and its fences, people could be seen all over the grounds. Some were spreading seed on the dirt surrounding the place. Others were hand-pouring concrete into forms placed up against the wall, perhaps fixing damage.
Then Kell saw where the telephone poles and power lines had gone. A massive stack of uprooted poles lay higher than the houses near it, and behind it several more. A few patches of wall yet to be replaced with stone were made of the things, but that wasn't what caught his attention.
Several dozen workers were sawing the poles into sections and planting them in the ground again. Much like before, the wooden rods held lengths of cable, but instead of carrying electricity, the lines were strung in a dense web from ground level to the height of a tall man. There was a space between the makeshift barrier and the wall, but none of the people working on the defensive measures stepped in it. Trapped, most likely.
What he could see of New Haven itself over the top of the wall looked like an older neighborhood. Other than the several watchtowers, tiny figures atop them, the shingled tops of single-story homes looked fantastically normal.
A wide gate made of heavy steel bars roughly welded together opened as the RV approached. Again, Kell was surprised, expecting some kind of security check and the need to leave the RV outside the gate. Instead the guards waved them through, pointing to a small gravel lot next to the road inside the gate. A man in scrubs waited there with an idling ambulance, stretcher ready to move.
“Did you radio ahead?” Kell asked Kate.
She shook her head. “Nope. They had someone waiting here when we showed up, too. Well, a bunch more people, but our last group was bigger.”
Kell helped load Andrea onto the stretcher, and turned to walk away when the man grabbed his arm. “I'm Phil,” the man said. “I'm one of the doctors here, and I'd like all of you to come with me.”
“It's okay,” Kell said. “Take Andrea and the others. I'll be fine until you have time for me.”
Phil gave him a sheepish smile. “That's very noble of you, but I wasn't asking,” he said. “And before you start protesting, we have more than enough staff to take care of all of you.”
Laura and Michelle approached with Evan in tow. Kell helped them into the ambulance, then sat. Kate jogged up and gave him a wink. “I'll take the RV back where it belongs. I'll be by to visit later.” She threw the doors closed and thumped the back of the truck twice.
The clinic was comfortable and overstaffed, at least for the number of patients in it at the moment. Which amounted to Kell, Michelle, Andrea, Laura, and an irritated man with a length of wood jutting out of his leg.
Both doctors—Phil and an older man with a mane of silvery-white hair named Evans—were on duty. Though the older man was gruff and short with his patients, upon meeting Evan and making a joke about the similarity of their names, he managed to make the boy smile. Phil took care of Kell and the rest of the group while Evans led a flurry of students downstairs, Andrea in tow.
Over the first eight hours, Kell saw shifts change three times. The last was well after midnight, and he'd yet to see the same person twice outside of the core staff. Phil and Evans had gone to bed long before. Kell was the only person awake when the night shift manager did her rounds.
“New guy,” the short woman said as she glanced at the hand-written chart next to his bed. “I'm Gabrielle. Nurse practitioner, wound specialist, and while I'm on duty, generally the boss of you.”
“I'm K,” Kell said. “This is...way more than I expected to find here.”
Gabrielle smiled. “The clinic? Or New Haven? Or beautiful women come down to heal thy wounds?”
“Yes.”
Laughing, she put his chart back. “Well, I appreciate the compliment. We've put a lot of time and effort into building this place into something more than just a camp. That means decent medical care. As for the rest, well, if I explain it all to you it won't be any fun trying to find out our secret origin, will it?”
“I suppose not.”
Gabrielle took a bottle from her pocket and shook out two pills. “Take these, and get some sleep. You've had a long day.” Kell obeyed, downing the pills with a gulp of water. “And so help me god, if you make a joke about calling in the morning, I'll break your legs.”
It was a joke, but it brought him a strange sense of comfort. North Jackson had been the kind of place he'd been happy to leave behind for weeks at a time on scout missions. The sense of dislike and mistrust was familiar. In the short time he and the others had been in New Haven, they had been shown nothing but kindness and compassion. A little fatalistic humor felt like home.
Tomorrow might bring with it some horrible but entirely expected reality about the place he'd moved to. Maybe they were actually serial killers. Or an enormous camp of marauders. Possibly Twilight fans.
For once, he didn't care. For the first time in years, Kell relaxed and simply enjoyed at least the appearance of peace.
He woke to the sound of loud voices issuing commands. The first creeping rays of dawn cut through the clinic's windows, joined by the clomp of booted feet. They were coming for him. Someone had told, maybe one of the kids. They knew who he was. This was the moment from the premium selection of his nightmares, when the angry mob pulled a Frankenstein on him.
Except the rushing bodies pouring through the door avoided his slim cot sitting in front of the floor-to-ceiling window. One of them even apologized when she bumped into it, her arms wrapped around the unconscious form of an injured man.
Phil and Evans were there in rumpled but clean uniforms, both men bright spots of color amid the mass of green and brown clad citizens. Moment
s later Gabrielle appeared from the basement where Andrea was being kept, assessing and moving to the next patient with the pitiless eyes of a battlefield surgeon. Kell watched in stunned fascination as she declared two patients beyond help, settling on a third. Hands passed her bundles of supplies, her movements measured as she cleaned, sutured, and bandaged.
Phil was no less busy as he ran his own triage, though luckier than Gabrielle; his patients weren't as seriously injured. Evans oversaw the whole affair, barking orders and moving between the bodies with the confidence of a man half his age. As more medical staff appeared, Evans ordered the muddy, sweating citizens out.
“We've got enough help now,” he said. “You're in the way. Get.”
A few of them looked ready to argue, but others stepped in to pull their reluctant friends away. The room, formerly a living room in the old house, cleared out quickly. The old doctor watched them leave, and when the last of them closed the door, Evans deflated a little. It wasn't that the strength went out of him, but as if a heavier weight were piled onto him. In a gentler voice than Kell had heard him use, the old man spoke to him. “Pull those curtains behind your bed, would you, son?”
Kell did as he was asked. Evans worked his way through the crowd of...nurses? Nurse aides? It was hard to tell, as everyone seemed to be doing a little bit of everything. He came to rest next to the seriously injured people Gabrielle had pronounced too far gone to be saved, and with the press of bodies gone, Kell could see them clearly. One of them was crushed almost flat at the hips, creating a mess held together—literally—with duct tape. If she was breathing, it wasn't apparent from where he lay.
The other was alive, awake, and terrified. It was a young man, barely old enough to shave every other day. His ribcage was deformed, blood misting from his mouth, fine flecks of it dusted across his face and chest. Without looking away from the woman, Evans called out to one of his workers.
“Daniel,” he said. “Please bring the kit.”
The low murmur in the room hushed. It was the unconscious act of people in the presence of something holy or profane, though the sense of life-and-death in the room might have been coloring Kell's perception. There was no doubt about the wave of discomfort in the people around him.
A man, presumably Daniel, came over with a plastic case. It appeared to be a small tool kit, which proved to be the case as Evans opened it to remove a mallet and a thick awl. The old man sighed in resignation, his slumped shoulders rolling with the breath. Even so, his hands didn't shake as he worked the grip of the tools, making sure his hands had purchase.
Evans looked over his shoulder at Kell. “We don't have curtains. You may want to look away.” Kell didn't, not because he was brave but because he didn't quite understand what was going to happen. He watched the old man hesitate, muttering a prayer before raising the tools to the woman's face. With a swift strike Evans hammered the awl through her nose and into her brain.
“Ruby,” the young man with the shattered ribcage croaked, coughing a gout of blood.
Evans set the tools down and put a hand on the young man's shoulder. “I'm sorry, Adam. She was gone before they even got her here,” he said.
Fresh tears rolled down Adam's face. The grinding rasp of his breathing grew worse, stuttering as the boy reached for air he couldn't find. Kell expected it to end at any moment, but Adam continued on, struggling every second.
He was crying, Kell realized. Weeping in great sobs no matter how much it hurt. Kell sat with his back against the window frame, frozen with pity as he tried to wrap his mind around what the young man must be going through. Adam began huffing out a mewling sound, which eventually resolved into barely-understandable words.
“Please,” he said. “Ready.”
Whether Evans would have ended the life of his patient, Kell never found out. With a final series of gurgling coughs, Adam died.
Seventeen
Kell and Laura were politely ushered from the clinic after lunch. The influx of patients—the result of a stack of telephone poles falling loose on a work crew—made their injuries too low on the priority list to allow them beds. Neither of them minded, insisting over and over to the apologetic staff that they weren't offended by being discharged.
He visited Andrea and Michelle before leaving and found both of them in good spirits. Evan was distant and on edge, but still spared Kell a long glance. Which from him was closing in on hug territory.
For his part, Kell couldn't have been happier to be moving around free. The clinic hadn't felt like a prison, but after so long out in the world he didn't much fancy being stuck anywhere against his will, even if it was for his own good. Despite the need for room, Phil hadn't let them walk out the door without a stern warning to come back every day for dressing changes.
The surgeon also gave Kell and Laura bottles of ridiculously expensive bourbon, grinning like an idiot. “A welcome gift,” he'd said. “Everyone gets one.”
“But why bourbon?” Kell had asked.
“It's Kentucky, man. What else are we supposed to hand out?”
Laura and Kell were met at the base of the clinic steps by Kate, who had somehow procured a golf cart. It was one of the larger types, a four-seater, and Kell was more than happy to stretch out in the back. Which amounted to barely fitting and sitting at an angle so his bandaged foot didn't butt against the front seat.
Before getting in herself, Kate reached between the front seats and came up with a set of boots. “Thought you might want these since you left yours behind,” she said, handing them over. They were new, not a scuff mark on them.
“Who'd you have to kill to get these?” Kell asked.
“No one,” Kate said with a mock frown. “Maybe next time.”
“They're nice,” Kell noted.
Kate swung into the driver's seat and turned the ignition. Kell was caught off guard at the speed of the cart, rocking sideways drunkenly as he gingerly pulled a boot over his injured foot. Kate, who had spent the previous day exploring, gave them a guided tour of New Haven.
Most of the houses inside the walls actually were homes, though more than one family had to pack into each one. There were patches of green here and there, gardens just starting, but most yards were furrowed dirt waiting to be planted. Kate pointed out several buildings that served different purposes. There were mess halls, three of them operating around the clock. A dispensary, which she'd visited to get Kell his new pair of boots. Not far from the clinic was a part of the neighborhood shaped like an island, roads surrounding it on all sides. It' wasn't huge, five or six houses on two sides, one on each end, but it was impressive. A wall surrounded it, obviously older than New Haven's wall. This one was made of odds and ends; pieces of lumber, downed trees, sections of chain link fence, old cars, and other assorted junk.
There were gates, one for each driveway. Kate pointed out a house with a smithy, and through the open gate he saw a huge man working a homemade forge. In the same huge yard a small group of people practiced combat. They were using spears. Kell smiled at that.
New Haven was much larger than he'd have expected. North Jackson itself was mostly indoors, the large factories perfect for securing a population from attackers. That same defensive quality made the place hell for personal space; if you weren't on business, you were in your alcove or shoddy home. Along with privacy, it was a huge driving force behind their choice to move into the more dangerous countryside.
More than once, children playing in the streets had to duck out of the way of their golf cart. The pure normality of it nearly took his breath away.
Kate took them in a full circuit of what the locals called 'old New Haven', which had been referred to as 'the compound' before the citizens decided on a name. The entirety of the original compound was the neighborhood itself. Much blood and sweat went into securing it, in making walls, and creating a safe place. The Haveners hadn't stopped there.
He discovered that when Kate drove them through a narrow gate in the east wall and into o
ne of the expansions. Here there were no houses, or rather nothing from before the end of the world. An explosion of housing styles littered the place; here a cluster of tents with a collection of tables and other furniture suggesting the fabric structures were permanent homes. There several trailers circled up, a small courtyard in the middle with a merry fire blazing.
There were a few larger, permanent structures, but they resembled houses only in that they had walls. Intellectually, Kell appreciated the design, though the heavy doors, lack of ground-floor windows, and spiked defensive stakes left something to be desired. Picket fences weren't supposed to be used to impale enemies.
The cart was left at the gate. Though the ground was mostly packed dirt, it was too uneven to safely drive on. Again, Kate took charge, leading them toward the northeast corner of the expansion. The whole quarter lacked the signs of long habitation the area near the gate displayed, containing only a handful of vehicles in front of tents and a few campers. At the corner of the property, close enough to the walkway behind the outer wall to jump from one to the other, was the RV.
Several small fires burned, people milling about them. Kate hadn't mentioned the fact that every person who'd traveled from their old house would be camping right in front of the RV. People waved at him as he limped by.
It was only several hours later that he realized it hadn't bothered him to be surrounded by people, no sense of unease and fear. It was a moment of clarity that came without warning while he jotted down notes for every idea he'd had in the recent weeks.
The Fall (Book 2): Dead Will Rise Page 17