The Fall: Victim Zero

by Joshua Guess

  He had no illusions about what was about to happen. The truck had only been started when he was at his most vulnerable, the wheel completely off. It came from close enough to his position that he was sure they had watched him the entire time. The spiked pit was a trap, but not for the undead.

  “Stupid pills,” he grunted to himself as he worked to position the new wheel.

  Heavy tires tore through the high grass on the side of the road. Kell watched the huge vehicle hop the shoulder and crunch across the pavement toward him. He continued to work, not rushed.

  His time living alone in the wild taught him never to show fear in front of predators.

  Careful to keep a steady, unhurried pace, Kell focused on the lug nuts. Wheels gave a small squeal as the vehicle braked ten feet ahead of him. The engine cut off. He didn't look as the sound of opening doors was followed by the heavy thump of boots on the pavement.

  Two men walked cautiously toward him with pistols drawn. He met their gaze, and the closest, a large bald man who held his weapon like a cop—two-handed, arms slightly bent, ready to raise and fire in an instant—gave a small jerk with the gun, indicating Kell should stand.

  Hands spread wide to show he wasn’t armed, Kell turned away from the truck, facing the men, and climbed to his feet. The second man looked less professional; his hair was greasy and needed a trim, his clothing stained with blood and several substances Kell didn't want to think about.

  “Keys,” the bald man said, putting one hand out.

  Kell handed them over.

  “Cover him,” the bald man told Greasy, and walked to the back of the SUV to rummage around in Kell's things. Greasy seemed competent enough, his eyes never leaving Kell as he held the pistol on him in one hand. Strangely, the pistol itself was uninteresting to him. The right hand, the free one, hung down at Greasy's side. Every few seconds a slight tremor began, intensifying quickly until the man became conscious of it. Then he made a fist to stop the process and the cycle started all over again.

  Kell looked into the man's face. He knew that his own had fallen into the carefully impassive mask he had cultivated as early as fifteen, when he had begun to grow. This seemed to unsettle the gunman slightly. Greasy's eyes narrowed and his moved forward a few inches, tightening his grip on the weapon.

  The gun began to tremble, so faintly Kell would have missed it if he hadn't known to look. The cause seemed obvious to him; bloodshot eyes, a distinctly dehydrated appearance (though he imagined a lot of people were looking that way nowadays) and the tremors added up to an alcoholic no longer concerned about hiding his addiction.

  Baldy was still digging around in the cargo area, and he gave a whistle. Kell watched Greasy—it was almost like naming murderous dwarves—for a reaction. To the man's credit his attention didn't waver. Given that Kell had nearly a foot on him and at least seventy pounds, his attentiveness made sense.

  “Whatcha find?” Greasy asked.

  “Load of pills,” Baldy replied. “Enough that I'd pulled this guy over back in the day, the chief would have given me a medal.”

  “Nice,” Greasy said with a grin.

  “There's something wrapped up in a bag, here,” Baldy said, his voice muffled as he leaned further into the trunk. “Closed tight with duct tape.” The sound of plastic ripping was followed by Baldy making a disgusted retch. “Oh, goddamn! What is this? It smells awful.”

  It was the cloak, wrapped in three trash bags and taped shut.

  “It's homemade booze,” Kell said.

  Greasy's eyes flicked toward the back of the SUV, his head following. Kell did not hesitate.

  Gritting his teeth, Kell pivoted half his weight onto his broken leg. The leg sent an urgent warning that no, man, this was not cool at all, but he ignored it. His left hand snaked up as his torso twisted out of the way of any accidental shots, hand latching onto Greasy's wrist and pulling. Kell's right arm was also moving, his hand gripping Greasy's throat a split second later.

  His hand found it on the first try, the hard knot of tissue that made up the man's trachea against his palm as his fingers, wide enough to palm a basketball, curled inward.

  Greasy's throat collapsed under Kell's ruthless grip.

  Using the man's stunned confusion, Kell pushed him to the ground and followed, putting his right knee onto Greasy's chest. There was no way to prevent the strangled choke that came with the effort, but not being able to breathe came with the added benefit of not concentrating on holding onto his weapon.

  Baldy's head poked around the corner as Kell struggled to free the gun, and he shouted before disappearing. Then, finally, Greasy lost possession of his firearm.

  Kell was raising it just as Baldy came into view, moving sideways around the rear of the truck just enough to have a shot at Kell.

  Which he took. Twice.

  The bullets hit his chest like sledgehammers. Pain blossomed across his entire torso, and in pure reflex he fired Greasy's weapon between the first round hitting him and the second.

  Then there was vague awareness that a third shot, the head shot that usually followed the two directed at the center mass, did not land. Kell found himself hunched over with his empty hands on the asphalt, vomiting loudly.

  The gun lay forgotten beside him as he retched. Thoughts of his opponent could not compete with the need to be violently ill, and each spasm sent new waves of agony through him, a vicious cycle which took several minutes to subside.

  At some point during that seemingly endless time, Greasy had died. His throat was so compressed that no air at all had been able to pass, or at least not enough to keep him conscious. Kell checked for a heartbeat just to be safe, but there was nothing.

  After a few more minutes to gather his wits, Kell finished putting the tire on. He made sure the lugs were tight, let the SUV down, and limped heavily around it to see what had become of Baldy. What he found wasn't surprising; his single, accidental shot hit the other man below and just to the left of his nose, leaving an exit wound that cratered the back of Baldy's head.

  A search resulted in two magazines of ammunition, a .45 caliber Smith & Wesson, and a flask full of what smelled like bourbon.

  Greasy's gun was the same make and model, and Kell was about to pocket it when Greasy came back.

  Kell watched. The process was interesting, one he had never seen up close. It was much like waking up, in that the subject seemed to come to his senses gradually. The eyes were already open—bulging, in fact—but they didn't move for nearly a minute. First there were involuntary jerks in the periphery, muscles in the limbs being tested out by the new force running the brain. Then there were several short, choppy expansions of the chest. Kell knew from dissections that this was not necessary for reanimation. Chimera infiltrated every bodily system and created alternates for most of them. Respiration was handled through the pores, as far as he could tell. The hair-thin filaments of Chimera found there strongly suggested it.

  Greasy's body went through a checklist of sorts, and eventually, all systems go, he tried to stand.

  Kell shot him in the head.

  “Sorry I had to kill you twice,” he said.

  Then it hit him. Like an image built of tiny pieces that finally coalesced into a larger whole, he understood how his solution could be worked into a viable cure. He had done similar things with Chimera before in previous studies. The plague didn't have an intent, it was not of itself a force of evil.

  It was helping. In a moment of crystalline understanding he knew: it was creating a backup system.

  His mind raced as he pulled the bodies from the road and searched the truck. It made sense, the cell architecture, the way clusters could interlock and join into larger single structures, all of it. He didn't need to create a version of Chimera that could overwhelm or even overwrite the plague. All he had to do was work out a variant that could disrupt the connection between the existing infections.

  That would be easy enough. Screwing things up was much less difficult that fixing the
m.

  In his excitement, Kell nearly forgot to check the bed of the truck. Then it was his turn to whistle as he pulled back a tarp and found can after can of gasoline in neat little rows. There must have been sixty or seventy gallons of it.

  The tank in the truck itself was nearly full, and after emptying several of the gas cans into his own tank, he topped them off again from the truck and tucked every one of them into the SUV. From the cab he pulled a shotgun and a box of deer slugs, nearly full, as well as a carton of cigarettes. He didn't smoke, but the world was basically a prison and he an inmate. They would probably make for good trading.

  Assuming, of course, that the next people he met didn't try to rob him, too.

  Kell spent the next day resting. Doubling back had cost him time, but with the fuel harvested from his attacker's truck he didn't consider it a waste.

  He had been heading north, not aimlessly, but with his eyes open for signs of habitation. Being cut off from the world completely for such a long period of time meant even the rare signs pointing toward survivors brave enough to advertise their location were meaningless by now. The back roads were marginally safer, and a few state highways proved to be nearly clear of both undead and abandoned vehicles.

  But he still had no idea where to go. Stopping and spending time healing and setting traps wouldn't be a problem; he could survive for weeks on what he had. Doing so came with its own set of risks, as the previous day's events had shown. There were people in the world who saw the rule of law vanish almost overnight, and as the structure of civilization swirled down the drain they cast off their own thin layers of humanity and chose to become something worse.

  Kell found it difficult to judge them. He remembered Jones in vivid detail. There was little guilt associated with that memory.

  Not for the first time, he wondered what kind of man he was.

  Throughout his day of rest, Kell considered his options. Planning out his movements was preferable to thinking about the men who attacked him. It wasn't the actual killing that bothered him; it was that killing them didn't bother him. So far Kell had interacted with two groups of people since the last vestiges of modern society went the way of the dinosaurs. He didn't count Alan and Paulie; those were the days when power still ran through overhead lines and water was being treated. Things had been falling apart then, but it was mid-process.

  Two groups of people since things had settled into the last stages of entropy, and one of them wanted to rob him. Kill him, too, if the guns were any indication, though why they hadn't just done so to start he couldn't guess. Chances were one in two the next living people he met would give him the same treatment.

  He spent hours lounging with his leg propped up in the huge cargo area of the SUV. Time to think it through, to plan. Kell fashioned a splint during his rest, a more complex creation than his first several attempts. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it would keep the bone from moving around any more than it already may have done.

  Frustration cycled through his thoughts as he bent his considerable mind toward figuring out the best method to locate not just people, but good people. Communication was out. Even if every cell tower and satellite in the world still worked, there were few people he would even be able to call. His parents if they were still alive, and maybe Leibowitz. It was a short list.

  After hours of trying to come up with a way to locate people who wouldn't try to kill him, Kell laughed. Bending himself out of shape over not knowing where to begin looking for people after five months of avoiding them.

  Something had changed in him.

  Knowing that didn't give him any insight, but it did give him perspective on the problem. Survival alone wasn't the issue, even injured. He could do that. He could spend time watching the roads from a distance and hope to catch sight of other people. There was an element of risk in that, but it was a far safer choice than many others.

  It wasn't the choice he made. Over that long, boring day of introspection, Kell decided the road, and what might lie at the end of it, was worth the risk. Simply being was no longer enough. Being a part of something larger mattered.

  Chapter Twelve

  Even as an adult, Kell had enjoyed the Harry Potter books. Like most kids who stood above their peers academically, he had been something of an outcast growing up. Not popular but not hated, seen as aloof because he studied constantly—a thing that should not be, apparently—Kell lost himself in imaginary worlds as often as textbooks.

  As he grew older, that contrast of interests stayed with him. He graduated from Narnia to Pern to Mid-World and darker territories as he excelled in his studies. Spending hours immersed in hard science, fascinated by the rules and interweaving majesty of it all, resonated with the part of him that enjoyed fantasy and the total lack of reason in it.

  As he lay on the hill fifty feet from the camp he'd come across, Kell recalled all the times Harry had vanished under his invisibility cloak. His own didn't have any magical properties, but it did the job.

  At first glance the camp was unremarkable. There were ten vehicles in it, ranging from mid-size sedan to small bus. They formed a wagon circle around the members of the group. Inside that circle there were two small trailers—not classy retro things, but large boxy moving-company affairs—which Kell became interested in almost immediately.

  There were no women in the camp that he could see. Men went into those trailers with regularity. From the sounds that followed, muffled and faint, and the slight rocking that came with them, he could guess what was happening.

  His blood ran cold. Rage like a winter storm flooded through every particle of his body. Most of it was aimed at the bastards below, but a fraction fell back on himself for being careless enough to hurt himself. The urge to move, to fight, to kill those men with his bare hands, was nearly overwhelming.

  It took him half an hour to make it up the hill after a torturous hour of walking from his vehicle. The only reason he hadn't been caught was because he kept his distance after hearing the marauders make camp. He was tired, and his injury prevented any acts of heroism. The desire didn't fade away, however.

  After watching for more than seven hours, the light began to die. Kell knew he would be there until it was dark enough to retreat, but even when the sun finally dipped behind the hills and true night began to fall, he felt no urge to leave. Instead a dark certainty overcame him. The women in those trailers—he assumed it was women, but he knew beyond doubt they were prisoners—would never be freed. Their lives would end looking down the barrel of a gun or in the claws of the hungry dead.

  Unless someone saved them. Kell knew he couldn't do that. Not alone. Not injured.

  Then he had an idea, and behind his respirator, he smiled.

  The one thing about living in a world of the dead that you can count on: there will always be some of them around. Kell had the advantage because he was essentially just another zombie thanks to the stench of his cloak, but the humans behind the barrier of cars weren't so lucky. They were targets.

  He had passed several zombies on the way up the hill; the sound of so many vehicles was a magnet. To their credit, the marauders had cleared the walkers that approached their camp efficiently and without making much noise. Unless his count was off, there were seventeen men down there. More than enough to defend such a small area against a few dozen undead in a rural area.

  But not all of the nearby zombies had made it to the party. As the first hour of darkness passed, Kell heard more of them working their way up the hill. He wondered absently how far the new arrivals had to have traveled to have taken so long. It didn't matter, really, but the data would be interesting to have.

  The marauders below kept watch, but only three at a time. Gas-powered camp lanterns burned beside them, outlining each man perfectly as they sat on the roofs of their vehicles.

  Kell had freed his bow from the strap holding it to his back five minutes after he'd started throwing rocks backward down the hill to attract as many undead as possible. Ev
eryone knew more would come, and these men were ready. What Kell needed, and what the sharp, regular cracks of rock against tree had done, was to draw as many undead in his direction as possible.

  He rose to one knee, confident the night would work in combination with the guards losing their night vision from the glare of their lanterns to keep him unobserved. Eighteen arrows lay in a pile before him, and he waited.

  The first of the undead moved right past his still form without stopping, missing him by three feet. Others topped the hill, no more than a handful, but it would be enough.

  A cry went out when the zombie nearest the camp was less than twenty feet from the ring of cars. Kell made a disgusted noise under his breath and wondered how these people managed to stay alive from day to day. He was more than twice that distance away.

  Which meant they would probably never even see him.

  The first arrow flew true, taking the guard closest to his position in the chest. The idea was to force them to panic, to fire their guns. Barring that, he would try to pick off all three and then get creative.

  It took the second guard screaming as an arrow pierced his gut for the plan to work, and Kell was rewarded for his hours of practice with a man wildly firing his weapon into the approaching undead. As if they were the ones with a bow.

  “Honestly,” Kell hissed. “How do you people even tie your shoes?”

  There was a commotion in the camp as people sleeping in vehicles scrambled to respond to the gunfire. Kell was able to loose two more arrows before enough were up and about to make that too risky. Four men wounded too badly to fight, at least. Thirteen left.

  Kell dropped back to his belly and slowly retreated several feet until he was beyond view. His bow and arrows came with him, slowly dragged along as he backed away.

  A short lateral hobble brought him directly behind a massive tree, the trunk nearly two and half feet thick. Kell watched from behind it, poking his head around the side just far enough to see the happenings below. It was a curious pantomime as the marauders realized the number of undead attacking them were negligible, then seeing their four injured men suffered from arrow wounds rather than bites.