by Joshua Guess
The nearest, whose voice was deep and resonant, spoke.
“Welcome to the Complex,” he said.
Over the next two hours, Kell was moved to a secure room, given food, a change of clothes, and a book to read at his request, which turned out to be a James Patterson novel. Proving the theory that the only things guaranteed to survive the apocalypse were cockroaches and Alex Cross.
When he was halfway through the fifth chapter, two armed guards escorted what appeared to be a doctor into the room. The man was dragging a portable digital x-ray machine behind him while also pushing a cart stocked with medical supplies.
“Hi,” the man in the white coat said. “I'm Doug, and I'm not a doctor.”
Laughing, Kell set his book aside. The movement caused Doug's guards to twitch, hands hovering over their guns.
“Your honesty is very reassuring, Doug. I'm K.” Kell slowly reached a hand out, and they shook.
Doug was a small guy but fairly thick of chest. His hair was an uneven mop of blonde curls, and his smile was wide.
“Yeah, I got briefed on you,” Doug said. “I'm the closest thing we have to a doctor here, so I'm gonna take a look at that leg. Don't worry, I was a flight nurse before, so I'm not operating totally blind here. Just sit back and let me work, and I'll be out of your hair quick.”
The x-ray plugged up, Doug went to work snapping pictures of Kell's leg. The harsh florescent bulbs overhead had been a surprise, but the whole industrial center the Complex was housed in seemed to have power. During the brief time he had been outside, the reflection of sun on glass gave away the huge solar arrays on the buildings, and there were several large wind turbines humming loudly in the distance.
The presence of readily available power would have been enough to convince Kell to stay there on its own. During the time he had waited in the locked room, he went over the small observations from his glimpses of the place.
There were people, and a good number of them. Enough to have armed guards on duty at all times. They might be tough, even merciless, with enemies, but they obviously kept themselves in check. There was kindness in them as a community, evidenced by the fact that he hadn't just been chucked in a room and forgotten. They had seen to his needs, and now to his medical care. He wondered if the people in charge of him realized how transparent they were. Killing him after treating his wounds would be wasteful, and no one who had managed to survive this long was wasteful.
So Kell smiled, which seemed to bother the guards.
“Okay,” Doug said after a few minutes. “This actually looks pretty good. I'm going to give you a brace. Don't think it needs a cast. You'll want to move it around, keep your knee working. I wouldn't suggest putting too much weight on it, so no carrying heavy things. You can walk, but that's it. Give it a month, five weeks, and it should be fine.”
“You're assuming I'll be around that long,” Kell said. One of the guards nodded.
The small not-doctor grinned. “You're my patient now. I'm not going to let you die before I get you better.”
It was a curious thing to say, but as it turned out Doug knew the score better than Kell himself.
An hour after Kell snapped the brace onto his leg, he was escorted to a large office by the same pair of guards. There were several flights of stairs and a colorful array of swear words involved as he climbed them.
He was offered a chair by an older gentleman seated at the desk that dominated the room. It was a working desk, that much was obvious, piled high with papers and littered with folders, the kind of organized chaos so common in Kell's own office.
The guards took up position on both sides of his chair, bringing the total number of people in the room to eight. Sitting in a semicircle centered on the desk were four other people. The scene looked almost like a parole hearing from a bad prison movie. A sudden, strong urge to start quoting The Shawshank Redemption rose up in him, and he was barely able to stop his Morgan Freeman impression from coming out.
“Laura tells me you go by 'K',” the man behind the desk said. “Is there more to that name?”
“Yes, sir.”
A long pause followed, until the older man finally cocked an eyebrow. “Are you planning on telling me what it might be?”
“No, sir, I'm not. I don't even know your name.”
The man's eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. “I'm Phillip. I'm the one who handles daily operations here. I'm not the one in charge, you understand. Just the guy who does the grunt work.”
“Nice to meet you, Phillip. I'm K.”
The smile fell away from the man's face as if it had never been there. “You aren't the first person to come here who didn't want anyone to know who they were. Some just want a clean break from the person they used to be. Others were criminals, dangerous people that feared being recognized. I hope you understand it isn't conducive to building trust, what you're doing right now.”
The man's condescending tone was irritating. For the first time since Kell decided to get in the trailer, he was actually...upset. Indignant.
The things you miss when living all alone.
“Well, to be frank with you, Phillip,” Kell said impassively, “I would like to think my actions regarding Laura and Kate were enough of a foundation for trust. I understand you're very careful with who you take in, but if you're willing to ignore how I helped those women escape...that situation because I won't tell you my name, I don't think this is a place I want to live. Caution is one thing; outright paranoia is another entirely.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from several people in the room. All eyes swiveled to Phillip, whose face had grown stony. “I don't think you appreciate the gravity of the situation here, son. I'm the one who decides if you go back to your room at the end of this meeting, or if you get a bullet through your head.”
Kell's heart raced, but rage overtook his normal caution.
“No, sir, I understand completely. It's your call. I just want you to think about what message it sends, you sitting there threatening my life because I hurt your pride. My name is K, it will always be K, and if you don't like it, you can have one of these guys shoot me now. I could have died a hundred times since March. If the last good act I did was to save two women from a lifetime of rape that would only end in murder, I'll call that a win. Even if I die because some self-important pencil pusher doesn't like the fact that I value my privacy.”
A vein was throbbing in Phillip's forehead, but one of the people beside him leaned over and spoke in his ear. The older man nodded, taking several deep breaths and calming himself.
“Tell you what, son. I'm giving you until that leg heals up. Consider it probation. If you behave and don't show yourself to be a threat to this community in, say, six weeks, you'll be given a place here with us. If—for any reason whatsoever—you prove to be less than honorable in your intentions, if you risk the lives of citizens by your actions without just cause....”
Phillip leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together over his stomach. “If that happens, son, you'll be dealt with. Understood?”
Kell nodded.
Something dark glittered in Phillip's eye, but he gestured to the woman beside him without speaking. She stood, an older lady with impeccable grooming, and spoke.
“Now that's out of the way, we're going to ask you some basic questions to determine how best you can help the community. Obviously, since your leg is broken, we can't have you doing the more labor-intensive jobs--”
“Like fighting,” one of the guards muttered. Loudly.
The woman scowled at him, and the man had the decency to blush. “As I was saying, these are general questions. Please be as accurate and detailed as possible.”
“Sure.”
What followed was a great amount of truth threaded with a careful and vast tapestry of lies. The story of his survival alone in woods overlooking ground zero came out, accompanied by disbelieving snorts from the same guard that interrupted him earlier. Kell had the va
gue outlines of a plan, and they hinged on telling just enough truth without giving away his identity. Only a few dozen people on the face of the planet had known him as the architect behind Chimera, and fewer still that Chimera was itself the plague. Risk was a luxury he could not afford, however, if his plan to cure the plague was going to have a chance.
They learned that he was a biologist, but one who had worked research on various common illnesses. That much he could fake; years of study and lab work made him familiar with most diseases. Anything else he could research in books, should he be able to find them.
The panel sitting with Phillip went through their lists with practiced efficiency. The woman—Judith, she said—was in charge of skilled labor. The other three weren't so pleasant as to introduce themselves, but they were subordinate to Judith. One ran food operations, another security, and the last was in charge of procurement. It was, Kell observed, a marvelously simple and effective system of management. Four people in charge of the basic necessities of the community, and Phillip to oversee housing, construction, and manage the overall picture.
By the end of the meeting the board decided that with some training he could use his education in biology to assist the medical staff, though that would be postponed until and unless he made it through the probationary period. There was something of an argument about how he could be of use to the community, as every person was supposed to be, given his inability to ambulate easily or quickly.
Kell ended the argument by interrupting it. “Look, I'm a smart guy. I learn quick. I think I could fight if I had to, but somehow I doubt you want me to carry a weapon. Just put me wherever you need a body. I can learn fast and do pretty much anything.”
An hour later he was back in his room making armor.
One thing the community always needed was armor. The complex of factories comprising the Complex had enough raw materials to outfit every person in full-body armor a hundred times over. That was ignoring all the neighboring towns and cities and the vast resources sitting idle in them. They certainly didn't lack for supplies. The problem was hands to make them.
A sunny blonde woman who introduced herself as Carla brought him a huge container of aluminum wire, hundreds of pounds of the stuff she dragged in on a dolly, as well as a small kit of tools. A brief tutorial and a small illustrated packet later, and Kell was making chainmail. It was slow and boring, and he had the feeling the insufficient lesson from Carla was an intentional act meant to make him fail, but he didn't mind any of that. The pattern of linking rings was easy enough to master, and months of working with hand tools meant honing the rhythm of opening and closing the rings perfectly took only a few minutes.
His hands went on autopilot as his mind raced with possibilities.
Three weeks later and life in his little cell became routine. The first night and every night after, Laura came by to visit him. Though he wasn't a prisoner, he resisted going out into the community at first. Walking was hard, and he used that as an excuse, but after a few days she gave him the grand tour.
Most of her visits were to encourage him to integrate into the group, but Kell refused. He did go out and about but made a conscious effort not to get close to anyone. If Phillip decided to deny him a place in the Complex, he would have to run. Or attempt it. During those three weeks he saw how good many of the guards were at killing things they wanted dead. Kell had little confidence he would be much of a challenge.
Spending time with Laura was strange for him. She treated Kell with respect, even affection, but it couldn't be any clearer that no romance could ever happen between them. The first night at the marauder camp, he had seen her dressed in rags that barely covered her. Kate as well. The two of them at the height of their vulnerability.
Kell felt a sort of intimacy there, one that bypassed human biology and rooted itself entirely in intellectual understanding. Laura treated him something like an idiot brother, and the bright smile she flashed him so often made the days of drudge work bearable.
She was traumatized and hurt, and because of that had no desire for physicality any longer. She had made that clear to him. On Kell's part, he almost laughed when she brought the subject up. Ever since Karen died, that part of him had gone into stasis. Where the need for love and sex and the rage of desire should have been was just empty. He felt none of it.
But having a friend was something he hadn't realized he missed until it fell right into his lap.
It was September, and the weather in Michigan—Laura finally admitting what state they were in after a week of him annoying her about it—was just beginning to fade into autumn. The two of them walked together in his daily exercise regime, three full laps around the main complex.
The guards and workers had given him trouble at first, but for the most part once Laura had joined him for those strolls, the catcalls had stopped.
Today was different.
Kell moved with barely a hitch in his step. Two follow-up examinations had shown remarkably fast healing in the bone. Doug the not-doctor had been surprised but pleased, and Kell went along with it, though he was certain Chimera was responsible. Several long discussions with the medical staff gave him insight into how the organism continued to invade and evolve. He ached to investigate on his own.
After the first week he had been given access to all the gear from his truck Kate kept safe for him, though he wasn't allowed any weapons. If anyone thought it odd the man sequestered away from other people constantly wore heavy armor, none of them mentioned it. He had discarded his old Kevlar vest in favor of his spare; being shot by Baldy the month before left obvious marks he wanted to forget.
They walked around the edge of the compound, Kell laboring to regain his stamina as quickly as possible by wearing his heavy gear, Laura dressed in normal clothes, but armed.
On the second lap they were stopped by Johnson, the guard who had taken an instant and vocal dislike to Kell on his very first day.
“You two need to head back in,” Johnson said, his eyes flat. “Just got word a swarm is coming in. Big one. You,” he said, looking at Laura, “aren't on duty for this shift. And you, prisoner, are ordered to return to your cell.”
Kell's fists tightened inside his armored gloves. “I'm not a prisoner, Johnson. I'm allowed out whenever I want. And I can fight now. I want to help.”
Johnson's face lit up. “We've been hearing from this one,” he said, jerking a thumb in Laura's direction, “all about how well you can fight. I'd love to see you try. You walk around in that armor all the time like it's a badge of honor. I think you wear it because you're scared.”
“Think what you want, man,” Kell said. “I'm tired of sitting inside every time there's an attack. Give me a weapon and let me help out. I'm bound to be rusty, anyway.”
A shout came from the distance, followed by two loud bleats from a megaphone. It came from the north, signaling undead at two hundred feet from the perimeter.
Johnson smiled. “Oh, you haven't been cleared for a weapon yet, honey,” he said to Kell. “Better run back inside with your girl.”
Instead, Kell laughed. “Fine with me. I'll go without.” He turned and walked toward a cluster of men readying themselves at the edge of the clearing, where a low mound of dirt acted as a barrier. Johnson and Laura moved to catch up with him. The guard grabbed Kell's arm, fingers digging in brutally.
“Get back inside. If anything happens to you, it's my ass.”
Kell showed the man his teeth. “You said I could help. You're going to have to physically stop me.” The megaphone sounded again, this time a single bleat. “Better choose fast. Not much time.”
Johnson's eyes flared with hate, but he released Kell's arm. “Fine, but she goes back.”
Laura laughed. “My friend is out here without a weapon. You can charge me with something after, if we're all alive for that. I'm going nowhere.”
For a long moment, Laura's calm, icy glare met Johnson's fiery gaze, and Kell readied himself to intervene.
&nb
sp; Then the screams began as men moved to meet the swarm head-on. Kell raised his hand between the two of them, snapping impatiently to get their attention.
“We don't have time for this,” he said. “Let's all live through the next hour, and then we can fight.”
Johnson looked away first, causing Laura to grin. The guard trotted toward the front, head down, and only then did Kell allow himself a smirk. He and Laura jogged toward the battle together.
“Here,” she said, offering her spare pistol. “You really can't go out there without something to protect you.”
“God, I can't believe you people,” Kell said. “Those things come running at gunshots. I don't know how this place has survived as long as it has.”
She slapped him on the arm with the gun. “Still, you need a weapon. Take it. I just stood up for you, asshole. You aren't going to waste that completely selfless act, are you?”
“No, I'm not. But I'm terrible with guns,” he said. “You told me the outside of that berm is covered in stakes, right?”
She didn't respond immediately, and Kell saw her eyes narrow in suspicion. “Yeah. They are,” she replied. “Fire-hardened and long. Almost like...”
Comprehension dawned on her face. Kell realized then that she was beautiful. Truly beautiful.
“Almost like spears.”
Kell's grin widened. “Yeah. I'm gonna be fine.”
The men and women fighting the swarm did so with surprising efficiency. Never having had a chance to see organized resistance against a group of the undead, he slowed his jog to a fast walk and took in the scene.
They fought in threes, one gunner working freely behind two people carrying hand-made shields, each holding a short length of metal that looked like milled steel sharpened to a point. The trios did their best to hold a line, but the lack of a cohesive shield wall meant some were pushed back as others stepped forward to attack. Gaps formed in several places, and while the humans were armored and armed and fought well, they were outnumbered at least three to one.