by Joshua Guess
The two of them had known each other for much of their adult lives. They had shared work and beers, vacationed together a few times, and even after the end of human civilization managed to reconnect.
John’s breathing went from bad to worse in a span of seconds, developed a sharp ratcheting grind, then stopped. Kell looked over and saw the man curled up with his hands still clutching his ribs, eyes open and terrified, skin so white it might have been paint.
More than a decade of history ended by a tiny piece of lead, like a punctuation mark at the end of an especially sad sentence. Kell felt something break loose in his own chest and forced it back down. The heaping masses of death across the world dwarfed this loss, but the difference was personal. John wasn’t some faceless victim to be mourned generically. He was a friend.
The steering wheel creaked beneath his fingers, his arms shaking with the strain. It took all of his will to maintain his composure, and even then just barely.
Eating up the last handful of miles took decades, it seemed. The body had a sort of gravity to it, oddly weighted in Kell’s mind. The more he focused on the road, on driving, the more the empty shell intruded on his thoughts. It was unfair that John should die violently, given how long he’d made it. As one of the few people in the world not versed in the brutal requisites of survival out in the world, John beat all the odds.
Until, of course, he didn’t.
Kell pulled onto the narrow road leading to the rendezvous; the old bunker John had been sequestered in for a few years. The area had been picked clean by waves of marauders and passers-by, but the bunker itself was sealed. Only Kell’s people knew how to get in.
When he found a place to park the truck that wouldn’t draw attention to it, Kell nearly broke his hand in his rush to get his feet on solid ground.
Slamming the door behind him, Kell fell to his knees. The adrenaline had long since faded, leaving the familiar exhaustion in its wake. Combined with overwhelming grief, it was nearly too much to handle.
Years of ingrained habit and honed instinct were what kept Kell’s brain from tipping over the brink. Rational Kell, ever the voice of caution and observation in the back of his mind, reminded him to pay attention. He was the first one here—had to be, since he was in a moving vehicle within a few minutes of the attack starting—which meant no one scouted the area for security. Anyone or anything could be lurking.
Also, he reminded himself, John would be rising too. He didn’t want to think about that.
Instead he pushed to his feet and leaned over the bed of the truck. It was fully stocked, everything contained inside armor lining the bed. He pulled the tightly-wrapped tarp loose at the corner behind the driver’s seat, where the weapons were supposed to be.
Whoever packed the truck didn’t throw in any spears, Kell’s normal weapon of choice, but there were many other options tucked into the bundle. He pulled out two batons, simple steel-bound wooden rods about two feet long, and started walking.
The road was still choked with abandoned vehicles, some of them burned out. Every one of them a perfect place for a zombie to lie in wait. It didn’t matter where Kell went, only that he moved and made noise. Even New Breed zombies would lose patience in short order, driven to reveal themselves by hunger.
He stalked along the relatively clear center of the road, hoping something would jump out at him. A powerful need to move, to act, gripped Kell. He was alternately furious at whoever attacked the compound, then angry with the others for not being here yet so they could make a plan to strike back.
After a few minutes the brunt of his rage focused on the zombies that just weren’t there. Which wasn’t surprising, was it? This part of the country was selected to house the research bunker specifically because it was sparsely populated. They had chosen to build a home nearby for the same reason.
Of course there weren’t any zombies.
God damn them for their absence.
He wanted to hit something. Kill something. Do something, so he didn’t feel so utterly fucking helpless.
But in the end, Rational Kell pointed out that he was alone on a deserted stretch of road, and his friend was dead. Maybe many of his friends, and certainly a non-trivial number of citizens of their little village. Even one was a blow, and Emily wouldn’t have sent them running for less than an existential threat.
When it became clear nothing was going to jump out and try to kill him, Kell went back to the truck. He climbed the tailgate and sat with his booted feet on the bumper, batons crossed on his thighs. The afternoon light filtered down through the trees, the air ruffling the leaves. On any other day Kell would have taken note, enjoyed the beauty of it.
Instead he sat beneath the whispering of branches in the breeze and wondered if he was going to be alone again. The only survivor of their nameless compound. Among the citizenry were several prodigiously talented fighters, skilled woodsmen, people with the varied skills needed to make it out without the advantage an armored escape vehicle provided.
He allowed himself to hope. It was a thin feeling, based on what he knew of his own people, rooted in logic. Kell fought back the memories of wiped-out towns, the overwhelming force brought to bear by warring tribes with the arsenals of the old world at their command.
Against some things, no amount of skill won out. Sometimes you were just overwhelmed, and that was that. Poor John was proof of concept; one armor-piercing round in just the right spot, and the show was closed. Draw the curtain, no final bow.
Just darkness as the lights went out.
Emily
She made it to the front porch without being killed, though several shooters had tried. The last five feet were a headlong leap through the open door, ending in a less than graceful roll and slide across the hardwood.
Emily wanted to see who was alive inside, if anyone was, but time was critical. The house had an armory—sure to come in handy—but it was of secondary concern. She wanted something in the armory, but not just weapons.
Silently thanking whatever impulse had driven Laura to have the armory reinforced, she dashed into the small room and found what she was looking for. In the back stood a fifteen-gallon portable air compressor, gauge still in the green. She’d been annoyed with the guys doing the renovation for blowing sawdust out of the room, even though Laura had asked them to so the coarse particles wouldn’t foul any barrels.
Emily hauled the compressor out but left it a few paces shy of the door. She went back into the armory and took one of the few grenades they’d been able to scrounge.
“Don’t fuck up,” she said to herself, almost a personal mantra at this point in her life. “This would be a stupid way to die.”
Thankfully the compressor was on wheels, which made it easy to move. She backed up considerably, giving herself a solid ten feet of runway, and pushed off as hard as her legs would allow. The compressor rolled across the floor smoothly, only jostling a little when she hit the porch. This was the most dangerous part. She had to hit the edge of the porch, which meant exposing herself.
No one managed to shoot her as she gave a hard shove just at the lip of the porch. Emily spun on her heel and darted back inside, not looking to see how far the machine went. It had a fair amount of momentum, but was also awkwardly shaped. Oh, well. Nothing to be done about it.
Instead of fretting, she slapped the emergency alert switch next to the door. It would only blare for a few seconds—the thing ran on household batteries—but it would be loud as an AC/DC concert in the meantime. The siren was a weapon of last resort, a sonic attack meant to momentarily stun and disorient while also telling everyone to use that moment to run like hell.
Emily desperately hoped it worked.
She turned and pulled the pin on the grenade, aimed, and lobbed it at the compressor. The throw was good, the grenade landing with an inaudible thud less than two feet from the compressor. She counted off the seconds in her head as she hauled ass to the back door.
The explosions were close enough together that Em
ily could only quantify them as distinct events because she knew there would be two of them. What she didn’t expect was the sheer force of it; the entire house shook, dust falling from cracked drywall. The volume of air inside the storage tank was large enough that releasing all of it at once rattled a house. She filed the information away as interesting but probably not likely to be useful a second time.
A column of dust blew through the house just as Emily was leaving it. The cover probably wouldn’t be enough, considering how far she was from the nearest vehicle, but it would have to do.
She made for the barn at top speed, relying on memory and a good sense of direction to guide her through the massive cloud of dust wafting across the compound. The barn might still have vehicles in it, and if not there was at least cover. If she was mildly lucky someone would already be perched in the loft with a rifle, giving the attackers some payback.
“Open the door!” Emily shouted when the barn loomed in front of her, a monolith in the dust.
Some brave soul obliged, cracking the door just wide enough for her to slip inside. The interior was dark, though dim sunlight streamed in through the cracks. Faces hovered in the darkness, frightened adults barely holding their shit together and terrified children, who were the reason the adults hadn’t lost it completely.
Very little of the farming was performed by machines, so the central portion of the barn didn’t house the expected tractor or other mechanical tools. Instead a short school bus rested there. Emily’s heart felt as if it were beating for the first time, glimmers of hope flowing through her veins. She had known the bus was here, but not that the work on it had even begun. It wasn’t ideal—only the bottom half, about three feet, was clad in armor—but it was a damn sight better than nothing.
“Everyone pile in! Emily’s here!” shouted a familiar voice.
Emily grinned. “Laura! You’re okay!”
Laura smiled as she stepped from the shadows next to the door. Her shirt, a utilitarian unisex gray t-shirt, was dark across the abdomen. “I don’t know about okay, but I’m still alive. You need to get them to safety,” she said, nodding to the people converging on the bus.
Emily heard the pain in her voice, and the resignation. “You’re coming, too.”
Laura shook her head. “I’m leaving, but I don’t think I’m gonna make it to the bunker. I’ll take one of the motorcycles and maybe draw some attention.” Their eyes met, and Emily saw nothing but steel in the other woman’s. “I’m gut shot. Not like on TV, either. It went in the right and came out the left. Only reason my intestines aren’t on the floor is the bullet was going too damn fast to tear a bigger hole. So you’re getting on that bus, I’ll give you some cover, and you’re doing it right fucking now.”
Though the dust from the makeshift bomb only lasted a short while, the wind had chipped in to help. As the bus roared to life and burst through the rear of the barn, sending planks and splinters alike flying through the air, they were swallowed in a thin brown haze.
It wasn’t enough to blind, but Emily knew it would make firing at a distance difficult at best. It was like fog in that respect; easy to penetrate close up, a nightmare from far away.
Laura sped past on Emily’s motorcycle half a second later, turning sharply to move in the opposite direction. The bus driver, Andrea, knew to take them toward the open section of fence Kell’s escape vehicle would have opened.
Emily moved in a crouch toward the rear of the bus, watching over the armor plating through the dirty window as Laura made her way to the front gate. Even in the haze it was easy to tell where she was thanks to the rooster tail of dust thrown up by the bike. It was equally easy to discern the gunshots aimed at her as they tore channels through the dusty air and slapped into the parched earth.
Laura made it to the gate and slapped the emergency release, and Emily saw the tiny figure receding in the distance slump against the post in relief as the gate sprung open.
Then Laura jerked and tumbled to the ground.
Emily hoped it was an immediately fatal shot. No suffering.
No one else in the bus had seen. They were hunkered down where the armor would protect them, showing they had better sense than her. An empty place opened in her heart at the loss of her friend, but the void didn’t spread as wide as it might have. Laura had gone to her death knowingly, making the choice in order to give others the chance to get clear.
Not just by the front gate, which was the clever part. They’d lived at the compound for a few years, affording plenty of time to implement the sort of contingencies other survivor communities put in place for situations like this. The roughly built tract of communal sleeping quarters on the southern edge of the fence, for example, were all connected to a narrow tunnel leading outside the wall. It would mean crawling for a few hundred yards and kicking out a plug of dirt a foot deep, but the people in those huts had time to try thanks to Laura.
A bullet pinged off the bus, sending Emily sprawling on her ass.
She eyed the folding ladder welded to the roof. “Is there a rifle in here?”
“Why?” Andrea asked from the driver’s seat.
Emily crawled through the press of crouching bodies until she was directly beneath the ladder leading to the hatch set in the top of the bus. “I’m gonna climb up there and take a few shots. Might keep ’em from shooting at us for a minute.”
Andrea snorted. “Just get yourself killed. And no, we don’t have a rifle. Just sit down and let me concentrate on getting us clear.”
Emily thought about arguing, then decided against it. There were sharp edges in Andrea’s voice, and she didn’t have a mind to test herself on them. Stress and loss made cutting people easy.
There wasn’t a person in the bus who didn’t show the signs. Even after so much damage to the world, so many personal losses, it still amazed her to see people were capable of feeling it so deeply when the worst happened. Kell often mentioned the idea of limited emotional energy, that people were only capable of spreading their grief so thin before it ran out, and Emily agreed.
But it grew back. It seemed there was no psychological callous dense enough to prevent basic human empathy from blossoming. It reminded her of shoots of green life bursting through the blackened floor of a forest destroyed by fire.
Nature—even human nature—was resilient as hell. Even if that ability to recover manifested itself in the hollow eyes of the people in the bus, it still gave her hope. At her lowest points, Emily had given herself over to nihilism. For all her capabilities, she had faltered in ways the children and adults around her hadn’t.
That knowledge kept her from arguing the point. Andrea was right; they got farther from the threat every second, and so far no one was chasing them. Doing anything beyond sitting there and being safe would be based on her ego and anger.
So Emily defaulted to her base setting. She’d keep herself safe so when the time came to stand up in a real fight, she could protect the folks around her. Defending those with stronger hearts appealed to her on a deep level. Probably because few people had ever stood up for her.
The thought reminded her what she’d been doing when the attack happened. Kell got away, but…
“Did anyone see what happened to Mason?” she asked, glancing at the haggard faces surrounding her. “He was out in the yard with us.”
Heads shook. No one spoke. A few of them looked guilty, as if saving their own lives was less important than noticing what one person out of six dozen was doing.
“It’s fine. He’ll be fine. Making it through shit like this is kind of his thing.”
Her voice sounded more confident than she felt, however. There had been a moment, just after seeing Laura fall but before she ducked away, when a break in the haze had allowed Emily a brief but clear view of the land on the other side of the compound.
The shooters might as well have been invisible, surely firing from a great distance, but their vehicles were not. A handful of them, with bodies moving. At a guess she’d
have said twenty or thirty men. Every one wearing uniform black.
Marauders wore whatever they could find, usually layers of whatever might serve as armor. There was little doubt in her mind that these attackers were related to Rebound, the old-world government project designed to help rebuild from a catastrophe. In the years since The Fall, the organization had quietly grown into a powerful, pervasive force along the east coast. They’d set up research stations where they studied captive survivors. All well and good but for the part where their scientists killed people to dissect their brains. Oh, and the kidnapping. Can’t forget that part.
Rebound built a small, stable civilization that was growing at an alarming rate. They had the manpower and resources of a mid-sized city. A captive from one of their strike teams laid it all out. Emily likened it to two warring tribes of cavemen. The only problem was that her side used spears and slings, while the enemy had guns and body armor. Mason swore the difference between what the Union—of which their compound had been part—and Rebound wasn’t as bad as all that.
She hoped he was right, but feared underestimating the enemy might have cost them everything.
Mason
Getting captured was the easy part. Mason managed it within five minutes of the first shot fired. They had been five incredibly busy and eventful minutes, however. He been vital in creating many of the contingencies his people would use in case of a serious attack, which made seeing them enacted as simple as moving from one place to another without getting shot.
The trick to being taken rather than killed was to make yourself stand out to the enemy without looking like a threat. If these were soldiers—or mercenaries, more likely—for Rebound, they probably had some idea who he was.
At six foot four and with every inch of exposed skin covered in thick, twisting scars, Mason was memorable. Doubly so considering how many of Rebound’s people he had killed the summer before.
After tripping a few switches and passing a few warnings, Mason had thrown himself to the ground near a drain and crawled through it. There was a protective grate inside, but he knew the trick to removing it. Once outside the fence, he sprinted north. That gave the enemy, who was in the east, a wonderful profile shot.