by Joshua Guess
Kell's guard, reeling from two painful injuries delivered in the space of a breath, didn't have the focus to even begin preparing for the sudden shift in orientation. He slid over Kell's hip in a flash and came down with another gut-wrenching crack as his weight drove his neck into the carpeted concrete.
The fight went out of the guard immediately. The ragged, labored breathing through a crushed trachea ceased. Kell was depressingly familiar with the set of observations that added up to another life taken.
Kell, freed from the weight of the guard, regains his balance and sought out Miles.
He needn't have worried. Miles had done well. He stood, covered from neck to crotch in blood, with his own guard still releasing gouts of arterial spray into the air. The poor bastard had forgotten all about his gun as he pawed at the red gash carelessly pumping his life away.
The room was silent but for the guard's weakening struggles. The patter of blood sounded like summer rain. Miles watched the guard die, and Kell watched Miles. Though Miles's gaze was flat and hard, Kell knew part of it was a mask. No one without serious personality problems—Kell's mind flashed to an image of Kincaid—could murder coldly. Not without conflict. The guard had been a part of the system that had stolen and killed innocents. That had fueled the act of will it had taken to do the deed.
But he was still a man. Still a person. And it still hurt. Kell knew it because Miles was, at that moment, a perfect reflection of Kell himself.
Twenty-Eight
“What the fuck!” Sheila shouted, though not at an unreasonable volume. “What the fuck did you just do?”
Kell didn't bother answering or even looking in her direction. He didn't need to see the horror in her eyes. Not when there was even more work to do. Instead, Steph and Turner did their part. The pair of them could be heard moving among the crowd, trying to calm the others and explaining what was happening.
Miles called over several of his people, who set to arming themselves. The guards, like most survivors, carried an alarming number of weapons. In addition to the submachine guns, each carried a pistol with extra magazines, a knife, and rods of metal about a foot long.
“Okay,” Miles said. “Ronny, Jen, you two stay on guard here.” The pair, who had been given the pistols, nodded. Their function would be to keep the prisoners safe as well as keep anyone from causing problems, as much as possible.
Kell armed himself with a rod and a knife. “The rest of you are coming with us. Miles will lead his team toward the guard quarters. You are absolutely not to open fire unless absolutely necessary. The off-duty guards should be asleep when you get there, and we don't want to wake them up.”
There were nods all around. Kell's job was trickier. He would have one person on his team, a woman named Gretchen, who would be armed with the other SMG. She knew the score about letting the other two guards escape with Rawlins, and Miles trusted her to do the job right.
Kell had only doled out trust sparingly over the last few years, so he was taking a lot on faith. Gretchen didn't seem easily spooked based on her lack of reaction to the mayhem in front of her, but he didn't know if her restraint would hold when faced with seeing her captors in her cross hairs.
Miles opened the door slowly, keeping the noise to a minimum. While it was likely the two guards still in the building were in the small office set aside for their use, they could be anywhere. Fortunately Miles's group would have to go outside to reach the guard quarters, which were housed in an attached outbuilding. Rawlins had explained it as a precautionary measure to prevent an uprising exactly like this from being able to easily reach the place without alarms being raised.
In seconds the everybody was in the entrance lobby. Miles nodded to Kell, who nodded back. Kell fervently hoped, as they made their way outside, that Mason was as good as he claimed. If the guard walking the perimeter was still alive, it could be a problem.
If anyone was capable of killing two men in a car then running full speed back to the prison and killing a third without raising a fuss, it was Mason. Kell let it go. Nothing he could do about it. Either Mason had pulled it off, or he hadn't.
Once the front door closed behind the last of Miles's crew, Kell waved a hand forward. Gretchen stayed on his left, gun angled toward the floor. They made their way down the hallway slowly, checking each room they passed. It wasn't strictly necessary, since most of the rooms served no purpose, but there was always the chance one of the remaining guards in the building was sneaking a nap in one of the empty spaces.
Rawlins would be poking his head out and calling for the guards shortly, assuming the doctor was keeping up with his part of Mason's plan. It wouldn't do to have an armed enemy at their back when Kell and Gretchen harried them through the door.
They were halfway to the guard office when the lab door opened at the far end of the long, dim hall. Rawlins stood there, eyes wide in either genuine fear or some of the best acting Kell had ever seen.
“Help!” Rawlins screamed. “Get me out of here!”
The door to the office burst open, two guards spilling into the hallway. Kell shouldered the nearest door open, dragging Gretchen into the doorway with him for cover.
Gretchen raised the SMG to her shoulder, sighting the two men without firing. They raised their own weapons while Rawlins continued to scream from the far end of the hallway.
“Those are the last two!” Kell shouted. It might have been true and it the timing had worked out right actually was, but the words were meant to make the guards believe they had no backup coming. That their only option was to run.
Instead, they took positions on either side of the hall and fired. Kell ducked back into the small waiting room, which could have been the one he'd been sequestered in days before. Gretchen only leaned her body back, giving herself as much cover as she could. She leaned forward again and fired a short burst at an upward angle, making sure she didn't actually hit anyone.
“Stop shooting at them and come get me the fuck out of here!” Rawlins screamed. “We can't let this data go to waste!”
Kell didn't risk peeking his head out for a look, but the torrent of gunfire immediately dimmed. “Pulling back?” Kell asked between bursts of noise.
Gretchen nodded shallowly. “In stages,” she said, and then fired again.
The enemy shots became more regular, falling into a pattern. Short burst, three seconds of silence, repeat. He used one of the silences to quickly poke his head out, just a flash, and saw the guards much further back than they had been.
“They're covering each other as they retreat,” Gretchen said. “Don't do that again.”
She yanked herself back inside the room just before a section of the frame disintegrated into splinters. Kell flinched as the particles of wood dug into his face.
“Sure you don't want me to kill one of them?” Gretchen asked. “That one is really pissing me off.”
“No,” Kell said. “Just keep them from making any brave runs at us, please.”
With luck it would be over soon.
The hallway had been quiet for nearly a full minute after Gretchen told him the guards had entered the lab. Kell wasn't eager to move forward, preferring instead to give Rawlins and the guards plenty of time to escape through the lab's exterior door. There were multiple vehicles available, of course, so getting away cleanly wouldn't be a problem, but Kell worried that moving while one of the guards was still in the room watching for them would lead to problems. Such as death.
Instead he put a hand lightly on Gretchen's shoulder. “Let's give it a few more seconds, just to make sure they aren't waiting for us.
When another half minute passed without incident, Kell pulled his hand back. “Okay, let's take it slow and easy here.”
They stepped into the hall, and that was when the lab door opened wide enough to allow a man's armored hand to slip through. It flung something small and black down the hall. Something spewing smoke.
“Grenade!” Kell said, diving to the ground and pulling Gre
tchen with him.
Bullets tore through the smoke, leaving little streams like jet contrails just over their heads. Gretchen, even held down at the waist by Kell's arm, still managed to fire a few shots at the door. The sound of lead slapping into steel rang down the hallway in counterpoint to the deafening crack of the gun itself.
“Smoke grenade,” Gretchen groused. “Covering their exit. You can let me go, man. That sound you were hearing means the lab door is closed. No more shots coming at us.”
“Sorry,” Kell said. “Do you think they're gone?”
Gretchen worked herself into a sitting position, keeping her SMG aimed down the hall as she slithered onto a knee. “Yeah. Otherwise they would have used the cover to keep shooting, maybe come at us through the smoke.”
“Let's go make sure, then,” Kell said. Gretchen grunted what he took as agreement.
It was a stressful minute as they let the smoke clear and made their way down the hall once more. It was possible one of the guards had stayed behind and slipped into a door in the hallway, but Kell doubted it. The men were survivors, mercenaries from the look of it, and as such weren't likely prone to heroic acts or self-sacrifice.
That didn't stop Gretchen from forcing Kell to check every room on the way, however.
By the time they reached the lab, Kell was certain no one was left inside. Kell opened the door and let Gretchen slip in first, scanning the room with the barrel of her gun. The exterior door was shut, the lab empty.
“Looks clear,” Gretchen said. “What now?”
Kell walked over and slid the bar lock on the exterior door into place, ensuring no one could enter from the outside even if they had a key. “Now you make sure no one who wants to kill us comes down that hallway, while I look around.”
“You want me inside or out?” Gretchen asked.
Kell considered. “Out, if you don't mind. If Mason comes down here, please let him in.”
She nodded and slipped outside.
Kell knew he should be worried about Mason, Miles, and the rest. The part of him that had fretted over the dangers they faced tonight chided him for being so callous. He ignored that voice. Either Mason and the others had succeeded, or they hadn't. He wasn't going to make a difference if they failed. The worst-case scenario from here, only discussed with Mason, involved Kell taking all the research he could carry along with a set of car keys from the pegboard by the door.
Until events proved otherwise, he chose to believe their little revolution had been a success.
He made his way to the desk. The stacks of files were in disarray, a few scattered on the floor. The drawers and shelves lining the back half of the room stood open here and there. Rawlins had probably taken some of it with him, enough to make a good show for the people back home. Kell was a researcher at heart, and thought about what he might have done in the same situation. The idea of leaving behind all of his work was nearly unthinkable.
Kell was torn between a compulsion to start the work of cataloging the research, searching for anything Rawlins might have stumbled across that he himself had missed, and curling up on the floor to sleep. It had been a long day. The stress crash was coming now that his fight or flight response had been turned down to sane levels.
So he compromised and sat at the desk. In addition to the stacks of files there were several legal pads covered in dense writing, and a thick notebook bristling with colored page markers. Kell blinked at the last; it looked like every project bible he had created. Leafing through, he realized it was exactly that. Every major piece of data, every observation, even an index of all the files and samples.
Kell flipped to the back and found a small yellow sticky note. It had today's date on it, and a file name. Apparently Rawlins left the hard copy behind for Kell.
Another sticky note caught his eye, this one only a corner protruding from beneath the desk blotter. Kell teased it out and found the ink smeared but legible, as if it had been shoved under the blotter in a hurry.
The zombie attack got them worried, the note said. They're sending a strike team here.
Kell's sleepiness vanished.
“Oh, son of a bitch,” he breathed.
Twenty-Nine
Kell burst from the lab, which wasn't a great idea. It was bad form to scare someone holding a weapon capable of fully automatic fire.
“Jesus!” Gretchen said. “What's wrong?”
“Stay here and guard this room with your life,” Kell said. “We have a problem.”
Gretchen stared at him with an incredulous look on her face. “What, you're going out there alone?”
“Yes,” Kell said. “I need to make sure the research in the lab stays safe, but I also need to let the others know we may not have a lot of time here.”
He didn't bother explaining any further, and took off down the hall at a dead run. His boots squeaked on the tile, and shrieked in protest as he came to a sudden stop just before reaching the main entrance.
People were gathered there. People Kell knew.
“Emily?” Kell said, dumbstruck.
She looked at him, grinned, and dashed forward to throw her arms around Kell in a bear hug. She pulled his head down where she could reach it and kissed his cheek right at the corner of his mouth, hard.
“Argh, beard face,” she said with a mock grimace. “You need a shave, big fella.”
“Uh, yeah,” Kell said, disoriented. “Sure. We thought you might have followed us here...listen, I need to talk to everyone. Mason, you, everyone who's still alive.”
Emily gauged the serious look on his face with a glance and nodded. “Okay. I'll gather them up. You want Kincaid, too?”
“He's here?” Kell said, surprised. “I thought he'd have gotten everyone home.”
Emily flashed another grin. “He did. Then he left the compound again with some backup.”
Hope flared in Kell's chest. “How much backup?”
“See for yourself,” Emily said, and opened the door leading outside.
Mason stood there talking to a vaguely familiar person, and past them stood several other people who Kell almost recognized. Kincaid leaned against the van they'd left the compound in. All told there were perhaps thirty heavily armed people standing around as casually as if they were about to have a barbecue.
Then Kell saw Kate.
“What did you do?” Kell asked Emily.
“Not me,” she replied. “Kincaid. He sent a scout to New Haven—er, Haven. They changed the name again. Silly, but whatever. Kate asked Will Price to send some help. They've got transports on the way to get the prisoners out of here.”
The world had come loose from its moorings, and Kell struggled to find his balance. Emily and a little backup he had believed possible. To see Kate, someone who had once been as close to him as family, risk her life to be here, was surreal. The idea that their former home, Haven, had sent so much support so quickly was...
Amazing. It was amazing. The world was a darker and more mistrustful place than it had been in centuries, and Kell had no illusions about his part in making that way. To see this sort of support was staggering if for no other reason than the sheer good it represented. It said a lot about the quality of people in Haven.
Now to make sure they weren't going to be ambushed and killed in the next ten minutes.
“Yo!” Kell boomed, bringing conversation to a halt. “I've got some bad news, and we need to move fast. I really want to know how things worked out, but for now we need to get a scout to the airport, because I think our friends are about to drop a planeload of soldiers there.”
“Well, hello,” Kincaid said. “We missed you too.”
“We've got people there already,” Mason said. “Wasn't planning on taking Rawlins's word that he would leave without some kind of betrayal.”
“He left a warning on his desk,” Kell said. “The zombie attack raised some red flags, apparently.”
Emily flinched. “Shit. Sorry, that was me. I rounded up a swarm to test the defen
ses.”
Kell shrugged. “No way you could have known this place doesn't get attacked often. And anyway, right now we have to worry about getting the prisoners and the research out of here.”
Kincaid stepped forward and started giving orders. The people around him darted off to various tasks. When he was done, only Kell, Emily, Kate, and Mason were left near the entrance.
“Let's get inside and start planning for a fight,” Kincaid said. “Just in case we can't evacuate in time.”
“You better hope we can,” Mason said. “If we don't the only option left is killing everyone they send this way.”
“Why the scorched earth?” Kell asked.
Mason frowned. “Because anyone we let live is going to go back home and this won't look like a simple prison revolt anymore. They're going to report that a well-armed and organized group helped make it happen.”
“So?” Emily said. “Why do we care?”
Mason pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because there are five other facilities just like this one. If they think this was just a revolt, then they probably won't see us coming when we attack the other prisons. If they see a larger threat to their operations, they'll move them or beef up security.”
It was Kell's turn to frown. “Who decided we were going to attack the other prisons?”
Kincaid cleared his throat. “As of two days ago? The entire Union. Every survivor camp we're affiliated with.”
Which amounted to tens of thousands of people spread across the Midwest and the south.
“Oh,” Kell said. “Well, okay then.”
What followed was a council of war unlike any Kell had seen.
In every meeting he had attended since The Fall began, there was always some unifying force. One person who, by vote or by force, was ultimately in charge of the whole thing. Kincaid was nominally in charge by virtue of being given command by the leadership of the two communities the outsiders at the prison represented. He was an outsider, however, and the prisoners had no obligation to listen to or do as he said.