Will frowned theatrically. “That hurts, it really does. Anyway, do you want the job?”
“What is it?” Kell asked.
“I need you to help Josh out with his archiving, writing the survival manual, all that stuff. It's desk work.”
Kell thought about it for a few seconds, then shrugged. “Sure. I've actually talked with him about it once or twice already.”
“I know,” Will said. “That's why you're perfect. He has a habit of getting information he shouldn't have, and a moral compass that spins like a tornado. You never know what he's going to do with what he learns. Which, given the aforementioned army massing against us, could be a very bad thing.”
“So, you want me to spy on him?”
Will shrugged. “I'd like to stay informed, but I'm more interested in having someone with him who can be a voice of reason when he starts getting all righteous and decides to spread information that could harm New Haven's security.”
Kell eyed Will suspiciously. “That sounds practical and reasonable. I feel like you're tricking me somehow, and I'm too dumb to see it.”
Will smiled. “I'm not the bad guy, Kell. Just trying to keep the headaches to a minimum.”
Kell stifled a yawn. “Yeah, fine. I'll do it. Now go away and let me sleep.”
“Oh, before I do, just wanted to say I'm glad you managed to work things out with Kate,” Will said.
“What are you talking about?” Kell asked, bewildered.
“Laura told me you guys weren't talking,” Will explained. “But she was here when I came in. Left right before you woke up. Anyway, sleep tight. And thanks.”
“Yeah,” Kell said. “No problem.”
Tired though he was, he stayed awake for a long time.
Ten
Kell knocked on the door. At least, it looked like a door. The section of heavily reinforced plywood had a handle, so he was assuming a bit.
Behind the stout wall, a door opened, followed by footsteps. With a clanking of metal, the lock released and a narrow section of the barrier glided open smoothly.
A woman stood there. She was tall, at least six feet, and her dark skin drank up the morning pre-dawn light. He hair was pulled back into a tight nest of curls. There was a bulging canvas bag hanging at her hip, the strap wedged between her breasts. She adjusted it as Kell stood staring at her.
“What?” she asked.
Kell shook his head to clear it. “Sorry, you just looked really familiar. Kind of surprised me.”
Her eyebrows lowered into a line, and she frowned a little. Kell thought it was supposed to be a serious expression, but the way it made her lips purse and her cheeks puff out made her look like a little kid making a face. It was cute, and the incongruity of something adorable standing in front of this small fortress was enough to make him choke back a laugh.
“I'm Jess,” she said. “Josh's wife. He's inside.”
“Oh, okay,” Kell said. “I'll just go on in, then. Don't want to keep you.”
Jess held up a hand. “A few things you need to know before you go in there.”
Kell nodded, taking the words seriously despite how difficult her girlish voice made it.
“He's depressed,” she continued. “It comes and goes in cycles. Didn't start until after we didn't have pharmacies to fix his brain chemistry. He also has anxiety problems. Don't stress him out. If he wants to talk to you about these things, you're welcome to. Until and unless he does, don't say anything to upset him.”
“Sure,” Kell said, bobbing his head in assent.
Jess eyed him, then pointed back at the house. “Go on in. Keep it light. If I come home this afternoon and he's worse than when I left him, you and I are going to have a problem.”
“Uh,” Kell said. “Okay, but—”
Jess slapped him on the arm. “Glad to hear it. Have a good day. Lock the door behind you.”
Confused and a little worried, Kell watched her stride away. Resigned, he shut and locked the door and walked across the walled area to the side door of the house itself.
“Keep it light,” he muttered to himself. “Sure, I murdered the world. It'll be easy.”
Kell opened the storm door, but before he could knock the sound of dogs barking drowned out all rational thought. They must have been just on the other side of the door, and from the sound of it vicious enough to tear him apart.
There was some muffled shouting amid the barks, which cut off as if someone had hit a switch. “You can come in now,” a voice said.
Nervously, Kell did, steeling himself for the inevitable mauling.
Just inside lay a kitchen, the floor done in small white tiles of various sizes, a repeating pattern. Josh stood behind two dogs, both sitting on their haunches. Though they didn't appear on edge, neither dog was relaxed, either. Both studied him with quiet severity, trying to decide if he would make a good meal.
“They're fine,” Josh said. “Just let them give you a good sniff and you're golden.” He choked up on the leashes latched to their collars. Leaning down between them, he pointed to Kell. “Friend.”
Kell took a deep breath and crouched, extending a hand. The first to sniff him was the thicker dog, who looked like a mix between a German Shepherd and a Chow. His short muzzle wiggled, stubby whiskers flicking as he smelled. His mouth dropped open in a doggy grin.
“Good boy, Bigby,” Josh said.
Emboldened, Kell moved his hand close to the other dog, a Golden Retriever so pale he was almost white. His lip curled, a low rumble filling the tiny kitchen. Josh thumped him gently on the top of the head. “Riley, calm down.”
Riley rolled his brown eyes toward his human, as if to protest this sort of embarrassing treatment in front of a guest. With a huff, the Golden craned his head forward and licked Kell's hand, then lost all interest.
“Let me just take the leashes off, and we can get to work,” Josh said.
“Sure,” Kell replied. He looked around, and marveled at the number of modifications just within his field of view. There was a ladder leading to a hole cut in the ceiling, which had to end in the hatch on the roof. Where a refrigerator should have been was a homemade box with copper tubes leading from it. There was a table, of course, but the walls were lined with shelves instead of cabinets, every one of them packed with food, all neatly labeled.
The wall to the left of the door had a bar cut out of it, showing the living room. Two sofas made a V in one corner. There was a small wood stove, also homemade, at the end of one of the couches. Silvery piping led from it and into a jagged hole in the wall, which was filled in with some sort of foam. The windows were securely covered with plywood and metal, though they looked removable.
More food and other goods were stored along one wall of the living room, though stacked around something Kell was surprised to see. “You still have a TV up?” Kell asked. “Why?”
Josh stood, tossing the leashes onto a sofa. He leaned over and flipped a switch on the wall. The room, lit by several candles, was suddenly washed with light from the fixture on the ceiling fan.
“Because sometimes we like to watch movies or old shows,” Josh said, flipping the light off.
“Wait, you have regular power here?”
“Sure,” Josh said. “The back half of the roof is all solar panels. The back yard has two wind turbines we built. Small ones, but still pretty effective. Oh, and we've got a stationary bike wired up as a generator for when it's not windy or sunny.” He ushered Kell into the tiny hallway, opening a set of accordion doors. “Washer and dryer used to be here. Now it's a hatch to the crawlspace in case we have to make a run for it, and batteries. Even took out the furnace so we could fit more batteries in here.”
Kell was impressed. “How long did it take you to do this?”
“Not that long,” Josh said. “Most of it was easy. Just maxed out every credit card we had.”
“You did this before everything fell apart?” Kell asked, shocked.
“Well, not all of it. We added
here and there. But yeah, we basically started a day or two after the outbreak in Cincinnati.”
Kell was flabbergasted. “But why? Did you know what was happening?”
Josh smiled slyly. “No, but I had an idea.” He turned, opened a door, and gestured Kell inside.
Strips of LEDs lit the room, which fell somewhere between an office and a shrine to pop culture. A large corner desk took up most of one half of the room. Another, smaller desk filled in the rest of the space along one wall. Both were piled with paperwork, as were bookcases which ran along the rest of the perimeter.
Where there weren't desks or bookcases, there were shelves and pictures. Over the corner desk hung two framed movie posters, one for Night of the Living Dead, the other for 28 Days Later. Corner shelves sat between them, festooned with action figures, dolls, bobble heads, cups, pens, sculptures, and numerous other objects with a common theme.
Zombies.
“Wow,” Kell said. “You...are such a nerd.”
Josh laughed. “Yes I am. And when I saw what was happening on the news, I flashed back to every zombie movie I'd ever watched. It was just so obvious.”
Kell gaped in disbelief. “You're telling me you spent all the money you had, put yourself in debt, on the off chance you were right that we were...what, getting ready to experience a zombie apocalypse?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds crazy,” Josh said. “Though at the start, I thought I was crazy, too.” He gazed at the wall of paraphernalia for a few seconds. “The thing that still blows me away is that I was right.”
For the next hour they sorted out exactly what Kell's job would be. Because of his injuries, he was unable to lift the heavy boxes of paper, but Josh wasn't put off by the limitation.
“I'll set out what you'll be working on every morning,” he said. “It'll be easy from there. Mostly collating and copying records.”
“What sort of records?” Kell asked.
Spreading papers across Kell's desk, the other man explained. “New Haven has a lot of paperwork. It's not just pointless filing, though. We're tracking everything from how much food we expend to how efficient our scheduling is. See, right now we're in a huge growth phase. Most of our effort is spent on guarding, producing food, and securing housing for all the people moving here. What we want is a baseline so we can figure out when we're getting stable. That way we can figure out the best way to begin to build new things, maybe even start sending groups out to pioneer and reclaim land.”
“Huh,” Kell grunted. “That sounds...”
“Incredibly boring,” Josh finished.
“I was going to say it was smart, but yes. It does sound really boring.”
Leaning against the desk, Josh tapped a finger against his lip. “Well, there is something else I'd like some help with. We can switch off when we're ready to pull our hair out.”
He laid a heavy binder on top of the mess on Kell's desk, flipping it open with one hand. Kell leaned over, studying it.
Rather than the neat handwritten and typed tables and tallies of the records, this was a chaotic assortment of notes and drawings, interspersed with the occasional printout or page ripped directly out of a book. There were many corrections, scribbled-out sections, and revisions. Kell stopped on a page thick with ink. His heart began to hammer as he scanned the page.
Excited, he read a passage out loud.
“The first and most important factor you have to understand about any zombie you encounter is that it could be one of many varieties. From the beginning of the plague, they have evolved. First it was the ability to withstand cold, then they began to grow more intelligent. Now there are the New Breed, which are undead capable of working in groups. They're almost as strong as living people, they're harder to kill, and they seem to be able to coerce other zombies to perform tasks. As important as it is to know what kind of zombie you're facing, it's just as vital to understand that you could be looking at an entirely new strain. They mutate often and quickly. Below is a list of types...”
Kell looked up at Josh. “What is this?”
“That's the first draft of the survival manual,” Josh said. “It's going to contain everything we've been able to figure out about the plague, which as you can see includes the stuff our observations and experiments have told us about the zombies. But not just that. There's tons of stuff in there explaining how to build shelters, how to hunt, what common plants are good to eat, which ones make medicines. Hell, there's even an engineering section for making crude generators. The end product will cover every base we can think of. You interested?”
Kell flipped through more pages, drinking in the information. “Absolutely.”
“Good. Then you can spend today copying over all that stuff onto a document. Let me grab you a laptop.”
For the next two hours, Kell lost himself in the flood of data. There were time lines of each observed mutation, cross-referenced by location. Page after page of observations made during experiments on captured zombies. Dozens of sticky notes marked pages, each note containing some factoid or piece of additional data that gave the information a whole new dimension. Often, these contained theories about the plague. Kell was in heaven.
His swim through the ocean of information was interrupted by the sound of an attack bell. Kell shot to his feet, his brain automatically deciphering the pattern of the bells into a location. “That's the expansion, north side,” he said.
Then the pain hit him. Standing up so quickly had been stupid. Thoughtless. After less than a week and even with the boost to his recovery brought by Chimera, it was still too soon to be doing things like that.
“Sit down,” Josh said. “No fighting for you. Don't feel too bad, they aren't letting me go out there either.”
Kell sat, carefully avoiding any more rapid motions. His ribs (or lack thereof) were grateful for the effort. “Why not? You're not hurt, are you?”
“Had a bad time a while back,” Josh said. “I was...really down. Didn't care if I got hurt. Since then it's been off and on whether they'll let me fight. Will is a friend of mine, and I think he's afraid I'll jump out in front of an enemy when I don't have to.”
“Would you?” Kell asked.
“No,” Josh said. “Maybe once, but I'm in a much better place now. Even my lows aren't that low anymore. Aside from that, Jess doesn't want me to go out unless it's absolutely necessary. So for the last month I've been an emergency backup. I only go fight when it's all hands on deck.”
“Been hurt a lot, have you?” Kell asked, eager to not think about how similar their situations were.
The other man smiled. “Haven't we all?”
He grinned at Kell's questioning look. “To answer your question...”
Josh pulled up his shirt, and Kell's breath hissed between his teeth in sympathy. It was only after Josh began to list out his injuries and illnesses that Kell began to grow seriously interested.
By the end of the conversation, he was fascinated by the possibilities in front of him.
Eleven
In the dark, he could think. There were no distractions, not even light. The back of the RV was perfect, almost a sensory deprivation chamber in its unobtrusiveness.
The attack had been minor, just a random herd of zombies with a New Breed leader who managed to get through the buffer before they were stopped. A lazy guard had fallen asleep at his post. If the stories Kell had heard were true, the man would not soon make that mistake again.
Far, far more interesting was the time line of injuries and illnesses he had heard from Josh. It was one thing to know that Chimera was growing more pervasive over time, cementing its integration with its human hosts, but even the bare details given to him about those injuries were eye-opening. They laid out a solid pattern for him to see, with plenty of data. Josh had kept records of everything, of course. The hard part had been coming up with a decent excuse for wanting to see them that didn't give away his biology background.
Fortunately, Kell was taking me
dical training, and Josh was overly trusting. It was an easy sell.
If he was right, the man might be a perfect case study for the progression of Chimera over time. He mentally reviewed the broad strokes, growing more sure of it. Recovery times shortened inversely to the length of time the plague had existed. Severity of wounds mattered less. Early on, Josh had been stabbed and it took him weeks to recover. A bout of flu around the same time sidelined him for another ten days. A year later, he recovered from surgery—an appendectomy—in half the time it should have taken.
Kell had left the papers containing all the information on his desk. Taking them with him would have looked strange. But he had memorized as much as possible.
“I need to compare this with John's work,” he said to himself.
“Gonna have to wait a while for that.”
Kell snapped out of his near trance. “Andrea,” he said. “Didn't hear you come in.”
Andrea absently flipped her honey-colored hair over her shoulder as she sat on the bench to the right of Kell's chair. “You missed dinner. We were getting a little worried about you.”
“Did I?” Kell asked. “What time is it?”
“Almost nine,” she said. “You've been back her for hours. We saved you some food, though.”
“I'll be out in a minute.”
“No, you're coming out now,” she argued. “You're healing. You need food. And if I leave you here, you'll just zone out again and forget to eat. Come on.”
Slight as she was, Andrea was strong. More important, she was determined. She grabbed his huge wrist with both of her slim hands and made good progress dragging him from his chair before he laughed and gave in.
She stopped him at the door. “Oh, before I forget, Will sent word. He wants you to stop by his office and talk to him.”
Kell frowned. “That can't be good.”
She nodded. “That's what I figured. His note also mentioned that he'd be in his office all night.”
“I better take that plate to go,” Kell said.
The Fall (Book 3): War of the Living Page 11