Not that Cole had too much time to think about what Greg’s death meant for him, Emily, and their unborn child. He was too busy slashing as another one of the wolves shot forward at him like a torpedo.
He caught it in the snout, knocking the animal down.
But more came.
It was an endless wave of brown and black and gray and red fur. Red fur, because of the blood. The wetness dripped from their eyes and from the dead corpses that littered The Welcome Room.
“The Welcome Room,” the Voice said. “What a joke of a name.”
Yeah, it was ironic, all right.
“I was thinking fucking tragic.”
It’s fucking something, Cole thought even as he stepped over Greg’s prone body and slashed the air, forcing two wolves back. He twisted slightly and did the same to force two more that were trying to outflank him.
“Clever little bastards,” the Voice said.
Emily was somewhere behind him, but he couldn’t see her, because in order to do that he’d have to take his eyes off the wolves in front and to the right and left of him and glance over his shoulder.
And he couldn’t afford that right now.
Not even a second to make sure she was fine and still on her feet.
He could feel the wind at his back and the sun against the exposed parts of his skin. The parts of him that weren’t already covered in blood. He wasn’t sure where he was bleeding. Or, to be frank, where he wasn’t bleeding.
Because he was bleeding a lot.
A fucking lot.
“A whole fucking lot,” the Voice said.
Yeah, that sounded about right.
He was moving in his own fluids, his shoes’ soles squeaking as they stepped into his own puddle of blood. There was some pain, but not as much as there should have been. That was entirely Mr. Adrenaline keeping him moving and dismissing most, if not all, of the pain that he was supposed to be feeling. It was the only way he was still up and moving, moving, moving.
A wolf charged from his right.
Cole turned and stabbed it through the throat as it leapt at him. It squealed and fell, its weight trying to drag him down with it. Fortunately, he was able to pry it loose and whirl back around just as two more attacked.
He caught one in the side with the knife, but the other one clamped down on his left forearm with its teeth.
Great. More teeth marks. As if he didn’t have enough already.
“The more the merrier,” the Voice said.
Not in this case.
“I was being facetious.”
You can stop now.
Cole hoped these animals weren’t filled with rabies, because if they were then he was done for, given how many of their fangs had punctured his skin from head to toe. The answer was a lot, but he wasn’t thinking of that right now.
“You’re worried about rabies?” the Voice asked.
Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Because you have other things to worry about.”
Like what?
“Like not dying.”
I’m not going to die.
“It’s not like you’ll have a choice in the matter, chum,” the Voice was saying, when Emily’s voice cut it off.
“Cole!” She was somewhere behind him.
Or, at least, he thought she was. Direction had become increasingly difficult to get a handle on.
“Among other things,” the Voice said.
He rammed the knife into the side of a wolf that had its mouth around his left arm and pushed until the blade sank so deep that the guard vanished temporarily into the animal’s forest of fur. It let go and would have fallen if Cole didn’t grab it by one ear and fling it at two more wolves making a run for him.
He struck one of them (“Strike!” the Voice laughed) and knocked it off its feet.
The other one swerved around the two animals and continued on its path.
Cole let it come.
Closer, closer, closer…
…now!
He kicked out, catching it in the side of the head with the toe of his boot.
It flipped sideways and slid across the blood-covered floor.
“Another strike!” the Voice laughed again.
“Cole!” Emily’s voice again. This time she sounded closer.
He had no choice but to glance back.
She was waiting at the door, holding it open with one hand. She had her knife in the other, and he immediately thought, She’s out of bullets. Fuck. We’re both out of bullets, now.
“Are we officially fucked yet?” the Voice asked.
Not yet!
“I beg to differ!”
“Come on!” Emily was shouting at him.
Cole turned and ran toward her. He didn’t have very far to go. He was barely a few feet away when he launched through the air and into the opening and crashed into the hot and hard ground.
Thoom! as Emily slammed the door shut behind him.
Pain. A lot of pain.
From his arms.
His legs.
His torso.
Everywhere.
Jesus Christ, there was a lot of pain.
“Come on!” Emily said as she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him up from the ground where he’d landed after doing his ridiculous headfirst dive.
“A header’s better than a deader,” the Voice said.
That doesn’t make any sense.
“Of course it does.”
No, it doesn’t.
“Everyone’s a critic.”
“The door,” he managed to gasp out.
“I got it,” she said.
You got it? he thought, even as he looked back.
The door was closed, and there wasn’t anything that looked like a lock on the lever. So how did she “got it?” he wondered.
“It’s a door, genius,” the Voice said. “Animals don’t know how to use doorknobs, remember?”
Oh, right.
But that wasn’t going to stop them forever. He knew that because he could see dead wolves on the ground around them. They’d gotten out here some other way.
The front door.
There was absolutely nothing to stop the animals from turning around and making a run for it. That was probably what they were doing right this second, which meant it wouldn’t be long before they turned the corner.
Emily knew it, too, because she was pulling him along with her. Except she was going back toward the corrugated steel wall of the warehouse instead of away from it. Why was she doing that? The airfield was in front of them, not behind them.
He gave her a puzzled look.
“They’re gone,” she said.
“What?” he croaked out.
“The chopper. Bolton took off.” Then, before he could question her further, “We need to get to higher ground.”
Higher ground? he thought but couldn’t get the words out. He was too busy hobbling as she dragged him toward a metal ladder on the side of the building. There was blood on the ground underneath it and more dripping from some of the rungs.
What Emily had said flashed across his mind, this time at a much slower—and easier to digest—rate:
“…The chopper…”
“…Bolton took off…”
“…We need to get to higher ground...”
The Bell was gone because Bolton had taken off with the others. Without him or Emily. And now they were stuck out here while a pack of wolves—however many of them still alive—was on its way to finish what they’d already started inside the building.
And he was in bad shape. He was bleeding everywhere. Pain overwhelmed him, and it was impossible to figure out where it was coming from. Or where they weren’t coming from. Even breathing was hard, but maybe that had something to do with the scratches along his neck. He didn’t realize when he’d gotten those. Probably sometime between the first and last wolf he’d had to fight off. How many of them had he gone mano a mano with?
Five? Ten? A dozen?
More?
They were climbing. He wasn’t sure how he was managing it. His legs were moving, scaling one ladder rung at a time even as he bled all over the corrugated metal wall. Emily was somewhere behind him, pushing him up. Not so much urging him to keep moving, but prodding him like some cattle that couldn’t move fast enough.
“She’s a keeper, this one,” the Voice said.
Yes, she definitely was. But then, he’d always known that ever since the first time they met. Emily was special. She was everything.
Everything.
He could have laid down and let his wounds bleed out. Certainly, he had every right to. He was weak and leaking blood from just about every known body part, but he was still climbing, climbing, climbing.
Because quitting was for losers.
And he was no goddamn loser.
“You’re my hero,” the Voice said, cackling inside his head.
Cole grinned even as he reached up for the last rung and pulled himself up and over the edge of the warehouse rooftop. He heard himself grunting—it sounded like someone else’s voice—as he flopped onto the hard and sun-drenched metal sheets on his back.
He stared up at the bright ball of light in the sky and sighed with relief.
Then Emily was there, hovering over him and blotting out the sun. He wanted to ask her to move slightly to the right or the left so he could keep basking in the warm glow.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he focused on her face. It was covered in a sheen of sweat, her eyes full of worry. He wasn’t sure what she was so worried about, because he was fine.
He was just…perfectly fine.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, the Voice snickered. “This is no time to be lying down, chum. The job’s not done yet.”
It was right. The job wasn’t done yet.
He sat up, groaning as he did so.
“You okay?” he asked Emily.
She smiled even as she started to cry. He wasn’t sure why she was crying.
What was going on? Why was she crying?
“Yes,” she said.
“You sure?” he asked. “You’re crying. Why are you crying?”
“No reason,” she said. Then, wiping at her tears, “Lie down.”
“Why?”
“Just lie down.”
“Okay.”
He lay down and stared up at the sun again as Emily moved around him.
“Don’t die,” she said. Or whispered. He was pretty sure she whispered. “Don’t die. Don’t die.”
Why was she telling him not to die?
Of course he wasn’t going to die.
He couldn’t. He had too much to live for.
But he was tired, though.
He wasn’t sure why he was so tired.
So, so tired.
He heard fabric ripping, then Emily was massaging his legs. By the time she started doing the same to his arms and neck and chest, everything had started to pale around him.
But he could still hear her whispering to him, telling him not to die. “Please,” she said. “Please don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t you die on me. Not now. Not now.”
The sun went down then, because it got dark all of a sudden.
In a flash.
Is it night already?
“No,” the Voice said.
Are you sure?
“Yes.”
Why is it so dark, then?
“Because you’re dying.”
I am?
“Yes.”
Shit.
“Yeah,” the Voice said, and Cole thought he could hear a slight something in the Voice’s, well, voice that he hadn’t heard before.
What was it? Sadness? Was that it?
“Cole.” Emily. She was leaning over him again, wetness from her eyes falling down and splattering his cheeks. “Cole, don’t die. Please, don’t die. I need you. I need you. We need you.”
Die? He wasn’t going to die.
He had no plans to die.
He had too much to live for.
“See you later,” the Voice said.
Later? Later when?
“Later,” the Voice said. “Much later, chum. Much, much later…”
Epiloque
The engineer wasn’t a particularly big man; five-five with a frame that was verging on skinny. Light brown eyes that couldn’t intimidate a small child squinted behind a pair of spectacles as if he had a difficult time seeing. Which, of course, was not the case; otherwise he would have gotten another pair of glasses already.
At least that was what the planner thought as he entered the room and walked over to where the engineer stood, staring at the big screen that encompassed nearly the entire wall. There wasn’t a lot of light—the engineer’s idea of “mood lighting,” no doubt—but plenty of glare from the massive display streaming live events from around the globe. The images that were being broadcast shouldn’t have been possible given the defunct status of the power grids around the world.
“How goes it?” the planner asked.
“As expected,” the engineer said.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Of course.”
“Really,” the planner said. It wasn’t actually a question.
The engineer might have blushed a bit, but it was difficult to tell in the dark environment. “Not quite,” the scrawny man said.
“So what went wrong?”
“We didn’t account for a few variables.”
“How many is ‘a few?’”
The engineer didn’t answer right away. The planner imagined his colleague fumbling with the exact right response. The planner was well aware of his stature, both physically and in the pecking order of command. After all, if you couldn’t make people of lesser rank uncomfortable without trying, what was the fun of having a higher rank?
“We’re still running all the numbers now,” the engineer finally said.
“And how long will that take?” the planner asked.
“Not too long.”
“Let’s make sure it’s not.”
“Of course.”
The engineer fidgeted in his stance even as he attempted to conceal it by flicking away at the tablet in his hand. It wasn’t very noticeable, but the planner was used to picking up the slightest tell.
The planner focused on a particular part of the massive display that had caught his eye. It was quite a task to concentrate on any one image. There were so many. A myriad of colors, terrain, and time zones. Day here, night there—and this one caught somewhere in-between.
But one screen in particular caught his eye.
It showed two people on the glinting metal rooftop of a building, the scene captured from one of the orbiting satellites. There were small objects—dogs, perhaps—pacing on the ground around them.
“Who are they?” the planner asked.
“No one consequential,” the engineer said.
“So why are you watching them?”
“Curiosity.”
“What makes them so worthy?”
“Nothing,” the engineer said. “Nothing at all.”
The planner didn’t buy the answer. The engineer was good at his job, there was absolutely no doubt about that, but he was a very bad liar.
But there was nothing about the man and woman on the rooftop—he was lying down and she was hovering over him—that struck the planner as anything special. He’d seen countless moments like this one in the last five days. Too many to count. After all, they all blurred together.
He said, “Keep me apprised.”
“Of course,” the engineer said.
The planner turned and left the room. He thought he heard the engineer breathing a slight sigh of relief behind him.
He smiled.
It was good to be the boss.
g books on Archive.
Fall of Man | Book 3 | Firebase: Page 21