He said this with an air of utter certainty that left Kell surprised and humbled. “I didn't think you'd be coming with me,” Kell said.
Dan laughed. “Of course we are. We like it here, sure, but what's more important than the cure? And don't think it's just us being altruistic, either. We benefit from it just as much as anyone else.”
Kell smiled. “So what is it you've been doing that you'll have more time for?”
“I've been working out all the schedules, in between taking part myself,” Dan said. “Basically, we've been planning for the trip since day one. Everyone here has been training for the day when we have to set up our new home out in Iowa.”
“Training? For what? You've all survived. What sort of training do you need?”
Laura spoke up. “Well, for the last two months I've been taking classes at the clinic, for one thing. I'm also doing some work in the armory, learning how to weave chain mail. Before that, it was working steel at the forge. There was a two-week class on the best way to get high yields for crops.”
“Don't forget the archery class,” Scotty piped in.
“That wasn't just archery,” Laura said, pushing a lock of red hair behind her ear. “I learned to make bows and arrows, too. That was a pain in the ass.”
“Dave—you know, the guy in charge of construction—has been showing me, Scotty, and some of the others the best way to build from raw materials,” Chris said. “We've done classes on pottery, combat, basic technology like building wind turbines, all sorts of stuff.”
Dan snorted. “And it's been a pain in my ass, making sure everyone has the time between their duties in the community and here, too.”
Kell put up his hands. “Wait, wait, hang on. Are you seriously telling me New Haven offers all these classes and I didn't know?”
“Sure,” Laura said. “Most people are required to take a minimal number of them. First aid, everyone gets. But I'm way past that. I've begun basic surgery lessons. Mostly sewing up wounds so far.”
Frowning, Kell let his hands fall to his lap. “Then why wasn't I told to take them.”
Dan laughed. “Because Will knows who you are. You want to lay low, so he doesn't put you out there more than he has to. People would notice if you didn't do guard duty or some other job, but the classes change all the time. No one thinks twice about never seeing you in them.”
“We assume Will expects you've spent your time at least theorizing about how to create a cure,” Laura added. “Which I'm sure you've been doing.”
That much was true enough. Kell spent hours laying awake most nights, ideas running through his brain without much concern for his need to rest. “So...what, then? You guys are all trying to—”
“Waste time, if you ask me,” Kate said.
Before, the group had been fairly animated. People nodding in agreement or whispering to each other when one of the classes had been mentioned, probably referencing some shared experience. Now, though, they went still and silent as one. No one spoke up. No one was shocked at Kate's casual dismissal of their efforts. Understanding was swift.
This was not the first time she said this. The tension between the group and Kate was as obvious as it was palpable, the sort of disconcerting and awkward silence when someone starts making drunken racist comments at a party.
The frightening thing was how clear the divide was. Rational Kell noted the body language; nearly everyone shifted on their feet or drew back ever so slightly when she spoke. Everyone was, if not against her, at least wary and weary of her.
“How did I miss this?” Kell asked, voice soft. “What's going on here?”
Kate smirked. “They're trotting all their hard work out like this so you'll understand how dedicated they are,” she said. There was acid in her voice, but hurt as well, though only he and Laura could have noticed. “They want you to be amazed and humbled and on their side when they tell you they don't want me to come with you.”
Of all the possible things she could have said, that was the last he would have expected. And when his gaze snapped to Laura, the last reaction he could have imagined seeing was the solemn nod at Kate's words.
Seven
Kell felt like the world had fallen out from beneath his feet.
“Whoa, let's take a minute, here,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it. “Where is this coming from?”
It was Chris Vernick who spoke up. “It wasn't so bad at first,” he said. “Dan started signing us up for classes, and we all went. No one complained except Kate.”
“Which was fine,” Scotty said. “She didn't want to do them, whatever. We figured one person out of the group not knowing how to make armor or stitch a wound wouldn't be too much of a risk. But it wasn't just that she gave us shit about it, telling us we were wasting our time.”
There was another awkward pause, and it drew on.
“Well?” Kell asked. “You guys can barely look at each other. Someone fucking explain this to me, now.”
It was Laura (of course it was) who raised a hand to silence the mutters in the group. “Not taking part was one thing, telling us we were wasting our time another, but the attack on the Hunters was the last straw.”
Kate choked out a laugh, a bitter sound. “You're so full of yourself it's not even funny. Sitting here acting like you're better than me.”
Laura grimaced. “You didn't want to join the rest of us, Kate. We were fine with that. You just wanted to go out and fight—”
“That's what I do!” Kate spat. “The rest of you can set bones and knit sweaters, but I'll be out there keeping people safe from being attacked in the first place!”
Laura bristled at that. “We've all fought, but that's not the reason.”
For the first time, Kell saw something like fear in Kate's eyes. “Laura?” he said.
“She threatened us,” Laura said, grim. Her eyes never moved from Kate's. “She told several of the group not to warn you what the attack plan was, what Dodger and Will had planned for the Hunters.” Her voice cracked at the end, though whether from anger or fear Kell didn't know. “She came to my bunk one night while you were on duty, after we had argued. I said I was going to warn you, and after I fell asleep she came in and sat on me. She never put the knife to my throat, but she had it out. She told me not to say a word, and I didn't.”
Kell stared at Kate, whose expression had clouded as Laura spoke, solidifying into an unreadable mask.
“I've worried about you for so long,” he said to her. Surprise flickered across stormy eyes, but she said nothing.
“Right after I found you, for weeks and months, you were so jumpy. So angry and scared. I spent nights listening to you cry and scream into your pillow. How you wished you could have killed the men who—”
“Stop,” Kate said, her voice flat.
“The men who captured you,” Kell pushed on. “The men who tied you up and beat you, raped you, and sold you. You could barely look at me for so long, I'd begun to worry you weren't going to be able to function in any kind of group.”
The people surrounding them functionally ceased to exist, the quiet was so perfect.
“You changed,” Kell said. “You got better. You took risks, threw yourself into fights you should have avoided. When you killed Phillip after he tried to stab me, I rationalized it. I didn't want to see.”
“I said stop,” Kate growled.
“You thought I'd run after we killed the Hunters. You tried to manipulate me into leaving for Iowa,” Kell said, the steel in his voice masking the anger flooding into every part of him. “I could forgive you for that, even though leaving now would put all of us at more risk. For myself, I could forgive almost anything.”
He pointed at Laura. “But what you did to her? That's unforgivable.”
“I didn't even hurt her!” Kate said, the storm in her eyes breaking. “She's been sitting on her ass while I've been out there fighting, trying to cut a way to John.”
“Didn't hurt her?” Kell said, shooting to
his feet. “Laura and everyone else have been doing everything they can to make sure we can survive out there, by ourselves, for the long term. And you've been doing exactly what you've loved to do since I found you in that trailer. You've been finding every chance you can to kill, to hurt. Except you can't wait, can you? You can't sit idle while there's one more trip to take where you can prove to everyone how dangerous you are. How no one can fucking hurt you.”
Kate jerked as if slapped. “Fuck you, Kell.”
He rolled on as if she hadn't spoken. “That's all fine, Kate. You don't want to wait until it's safe for the rest of us, I get that. You're broken and fucked up and you've put yourself back together the best you know how. I understand why you have to risk yourself, but you held Laura down and threatened her, and I won't have a goddamn thing to do with you after that. You two fought like hell to escape men who did exactly what they wanted just because they could, and I can't believe you'd act like them even a little.”
“I'm nothing like them!” Kate shouted. “Nothing! I wanted to leave because the longer we stay here, the harder it's going to be for everyone to go.”
Kell shook his head. “No. I don't buy it, and you don't either. They've been working themselves to death preparing for this. They haven't had time for anything else. And I, like an idiot, missed it. I missed you chomping at the bit. I missed how much you can't stand to be still because your own thoughts eat you alive. That's why you do it, isn't it?”
It was everything he suspected, all put on the table at once. Kate was stronger than anyone he had ever met, and that was the problem. She couldn't reconcile the indomitable will that had driven her to escape, to fight, with the permanent scars of her experience. Like a depressed person who couldn't understand on an emotional level that depression is something impossible to simply choose not to feel, it rubbed at her. The pain was always there, tearing at her.
“I don't have to listen to this crap,” Kate said. “I wanted to get out of here so you could work on the cure, that's all. Fuck your psychological bullshit, Kell. And fuck every one of you, too.”
She turned and marched toward the center of New Haven, not looking back. And just like that, Kate was gone.
“Son of a bitch,” Laura said beside him.
Laura handed him a cup of coffee a short while later, and it smelled like heaven.
“What is this, hazelnut?” he asked.
Laura smiled faintly. “Best thing about the end of the world is all those empty Starbucks just waiting to be looted.”
They sipped in the silence of the RV for a few minutes.
“I'm sorry I brought all that up,” Kell finally said. “I was in the moment and I wasn't thinking about how it would affect you.”
Laura waved away his words with his free hand. “It's fine. I'm not embarrassed or anything.”
Kell almost choked on his coffee. “I didn't think you'd be embarrassed. Hell, I thought I might have hurt your feelings.”
She gave him a level gaze. “There's not a day I don't think about what happened. You can't remind me of something I can't forget. And it's not like everyone in the group doesn't already know.” She took a thoughtful sip from her mug. “You're right, you know. About Kate.”
“In what way?”
Laura cocked her head. “I've spent a lot of time at the clinic. Some wounds you can't just sew up, did you know? You have to let them heal from the inside first so nothing gets trapped in there and festers. That's kind of how I see it. Kate and I went through the same ordeal, but I didn't close up. I faced it, let it heal slowly. She just let it scab over and get infected. When you do it that way, you feel it every time you move.”
“Your metaphor is powerful, wise one,” he said from behind his mug.
Laura slapped him on the arm. Really hard, actually.
“I was trying to have a moment there, you dick,” she said.
“Sorry, couldn't resist.”
Laura deflated a little, settling back into her chair. “But I'm not wrong. She never dealt with it. Can't blame her for that, really. Everyone copes—or doesn't—in different ways. I just wish things had turned out differently.”
“So do I,” Kell said, setting down his mug. “We can hope she'll eventually understand, but I'm not going to bet on it. We have to deal with her being gone and move on.”
Laura's eyebrows shot up. “No moping? No beating your chest in guilt?”
“Not this time,” he replied. “And not any more. We don't live in a world with the luxury of very many second guesses. We did what we had to with the Hunters. Same with Kate. The world is a different place. A scary, dangerous one where we have to make tough calls and live with them. It's fucked up and harsh, but anything else will get us killed.”
Laura studied him. “Why, Kell. I think you're finally being subtle. You're saying something, but I can't make it out.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, though it was a tired one. “Well, I guess I'm saying that even if she comes crawling back here and begs forgiveness, we just can't take the risk. I don't think Kate is a bad person, just messed up, even after what she did to you.”
Laura nodded. “But we can't take that risk. Right?”
Kell nodded. “And not just that. We should stay here until we're sure it's safe to head to Iowa. We're only a few weeks past the Hunters being a problem. New Haven has been good to us, and I'd like to repay that.”
“It won't hurt, for sure,” Laura said. “Every minute of time we have to learn crafts will pay for itself a hundred times over down the road. How long do you think it'll be before Will gives us the all clear? A few more weeks?”
Kell laughed. “Seriously? Man, now you're the naïve one, and I get to explain things to you. Man, it feels weird from this side.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on, Laura,” he said. “You know the facts as well as I do. Put them together. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people in the UAS. More showing up all the time. We've interrogated their people. We know they're starving. We know they doubled down on the Hunters when we stopped their other supply lines. Now they don't have any way to wring supplies from the north—us—and they can't keep a starving, rioting population under control for very long. So what are the options?”
Laura put a hand over her eyes. “I'm such an idiot. The thing with Kate scrambled my brains.”
“It's okay,” he said brightly, patting her on the knee. “You'll go back to being more politically perceptive than I am tomorrow. For today, we should probably warn everyone in the group about what we're likely to face in the next few months.”
“War,” she said.
“War,” he agreed, the word tasting of ashes in his mouth. “Even if they don't take a single crate of food from us, it's a win for them, because we won't have any choice but to kill their people when they come for us. And they absolutely will. They can't let a challenge like the total annihilation of the Hunters go unanswered.”
She took a deep breath. “So either we kill their soldiers, reducing the number of mouths they have to feed, or they kill us and take everything we have.”
“Yep,” Kell said. “And you know the really messed up thing?”
“More messed up than fighting a war after the end of the world?”
“Oh, yeah,” Kell said.
“Enlighten me,” Laura said.
He picked his mug up, deliberately pausing before taking a long swig of coffee, then arched an eyebrow theatrically. She smiled at him; she always did when he acted goofy, which was the only reason he did it. “Go on,” she said. “Don't keep me in suspense.”
“The really terrible part,” Kell said, “is that I'm almost positive Will knew he would be starting a war when he decided to kill all the Hunters. He picked this fight on purpose.”
Kell tried to sleep not long after, but the coffee had done its job too well. Flush with energy and desperate to take his mind off the (frankly ridiculous) day he'd had, he went searching for Dan.
As usual, Dan worked to make sure there was food for any members of the group who wanted it, whether returning home for the evening or just passing through on the way to another assignment. Most of the time this meant scheduling a cook to handle the excellent grill they had erected, but some days it meant donning the apron and wielding the spatula himself.
“Want a burger?” Dan asked as Kell walked up.
“No, thanks,” Kell said. “After all that, I don't have much appetite.”
Dan reached into the clever cooling chest built into the far right of the grill, producing a tall jar. “I have pickles,” he said.
“I want all the pickles,” Kell said.
Laughing, Dan laid several out on a paper towel. “So what's up?”
Crunching into pure bliss, Kell talked around his food. “I want to go to some of those classes,” he said.
Dan grinned. “I thought you would, once you knew about them.” As if by magic, a schedule appeared in his hand. “All of them are on here.”
Kell scanned the neat grid. “They're color-coded,” he said.
“And indexed by discipline,” Dan said proudly. “There's a key at the bottom.”
“You really are a profoundly organized guy, Dan.”
“Thanks, I know.”
It was Kell's turn to grin. “I don't know if I meant that as a compliment. Back before, you might have seen a psychologist about this.”
“Psychiatrist,” Dan corrected. “OCD is a bitch, but if you learn to use your powers for the forces of good, it can come in handy.”
Kell pored over the schedule. “Even with all the stuff people named, I didn't expect so much.”
Dan leaned in, pointing out a block of classes. “I figure you can skip those. They're mostly biology and physiology.” His finger glided across the page, resting on a set of boxes outlined in black. “Those are all combat of one kind or another. Of course, you can do whatever you like, I just thought you might want to brush up a little.”
He spent the next hour learning the details, asking Dan and anyone who happened by endless questions about the content of each class, what the instructors were like, and every other relevant fact he could pull from them. When all was said and done, there were too many things he wanted to learn and too few hours in the day.
The Fall (Book 3): War of the Living Page 8