The Fall (Book 3): War of the Living (20 page)

Lee was not wrong, but neither was he entirely right. Orders spread through the Union ranks quickly after the decision to attack was made. It was a near certainty the UAS would also use the cover of night to position troops nearer the defenders. It was likely they would attack as well, if not a sure bet. Rather than give in to expectations, Will and Dodger called on the best trackers and woodsmen to rove about in sentry groups, keeping the enemy from moving in close enough to do any real damage.

The rest of them slept, ate, and prepared to strike just before dawn. It had a certain logic, as the UAS would be expecting them to move in the darkest part of night with plenty of time left to retreat under the same conditions. Instead they would attack after the enemy had spent a long night fruitlessly probing and standing watch. A bored, tired soldier is a far easier target.

Kell found himself prowling the southern edge of the front in the small hours of the morning. The first streaks of gray had yet to appear in the sky, but the predawn would be on them soon. Patrolling the outer edges was theoretically safer than being closer to the middle, where the majority of Union soldiers would be.

Lee had advocated shelling the UAS with artillery until they broke and ran, then cutting them down as they scattered. Dodger shut him down, pointing out that the enemy had spread out enough to blunt the effectiveness of those sorts of attacks, and reminding him of the need to keep the UAS from doing anything too unpredictable. Their greatest advantage was knowing the land better than the enemy, and keeping them in place was critical to exploiting that advantage.

Of course, now the fighting was going to be more or less man-to-man, so Kell expected a truly frightening number of people to die.

“Hold on,” Laura, who was on point in their small group, said.

Kell and Lee stopped immediately. Kell listened, his ears straining to pick up the tiniest out of place sounds, and he knew the others were doing the same. As quietly as possible, he pulled the night scope from his pocket, raised it to his eye, and pressed the button.

The grainy image through the scope wasn't ideal, but it worked well enough to make out people. At first he saw nothing, scanning in a slow circle. The field they stood in was only a small break in the surrounding trees.

Then something moved. He focused in on it, putting his free hand on Laura's shoulder.

“We've got company,” he breathed, barely loud enough to be heard. “They've got weapons I don't recognize, they look like tubes—”

Lee snatched the scope from his hand, then swore under his breath. “Those are portable mortars.”

“How many?” Laura asked calmly. “And how far?”

“Ten men, five mortars. They're about forty yards away. Looks like they're using ambient light. No sign they have night vision.”

Kell leaned in between them. “You two have guns. You move in closer to them. I'll swing around and get their attention.”

He gave them no chance to argue, slipping away in a careful lope across the field. Kell swept forward in a crouch, keeping his steps as light as possible. The new grass helped; rather than being dry and crunchy, the springy blades cushioned his footfalls.

The enemies were in the trees, though not terribly far. Kell opened his eyes as wide as he could, forcing his body to adapt to the darkness faster. The long arc of his travel brought him behind the soldiers by a good twenty yards, where he stepped into the treeline.

Here, he was truly in his element. There was no other thought, no fear or worry. Kell had spent months alone learning to navigate and survive in the wilderness. Necessity being the best teacher, he had been an excellent student. Those early days had been hungry ones, until he began to develop his skills and the comfort to use them.

He stepped on tree roots when possible, careful to keep the hard soles of his boots from scraping across them. Otherwise he watched the forest floor as much or more than the soldiers in the distance, avoiding dead leaves, twigs, and fallen branches.

Lee would be watching him, waiting for the right moment to attack. Kell felt safe in the assumption that Lee would be kicking his ass after this, likely with help from Laura. He was careful not to grin, lest the gleam of his teeth give away his location should a soldier look back at him.

It took him less than three minutes to move into position. He was ten feet away and might as well have been a ghost for all the enemy noticed him. They were stopped, studying what looked like map under the light of a tiny LED. Kell kept most of his large frame behind a tree, only tilting his head out to gauge his options.

He reached one hand toward his back and pulled his spear from the leather loops holding it in place. It, too, was blackened, a thin layer of soot to keep it from giving him away. With a deep, slow breath, he found the proper grip, never taking his eyes from the men in front of him.

In a single movement, Kell stepped sideways, cast the spear with all his strength, and whipped his body back around the tree. Even as he moved to put the tree between him and the inevitable gunshots, he pulled his single grenade from his belt. Just as the first shouts and shots rang out, he pulled the pin and chucked the grenade toward the enemy without moving his back from the tree.

Bullets bit into the wood with jarring force, enough to make the whole tree vibrate. Chips of wood and bark flew crazily. Kell found himself laughing when the grenade exploded.

To his surprise, neither of his companions said a word about him running off after the fight was over. Not that there was much fight to it; between the grenade and the two marksmen catching the enemy off guard, they hadn't lasted long. Lee did the unavoidable cleanup, killing the men who were injured too badly to fight but not injured enough to die quickly.

“What gives?” Kell asked as they ambled back to camp. “I figured you guys were gonna stab me after that.”

Lee shrugged. Laura only shook her head ruefully.

“You weren't stupid about it,” she said. “You didn't jump in and try to kill those guys. You also weren't wrong, because if we'd have started shooting out of the blue, it'd have been good odds at least one of us would have died. You did the right thing and didn't take any unnecessary risks.”

“Then why does he look like I just punched his kitten?” Kell asked, nodding toward Lee.

“Because he knows I'm right and doesn't want to admit it,” she said.

Lee grunted. “I love it when you two talk about me like I'm not here.”

Kell considered. “Well, we're both old enough to be your parents, so if it helps you can just pretend you're our kid and write it off as something adults do.”

Lee scowled. “I'm a grown man, dick.”

“If you say so,” Kell said. “But until you have to shave every day, I'm going to have to disagree.”

The younger man kept on frowning, but unless Kell was mistaken, he was trying not to laugh.

Explosions and firefights had a way of drawing attention, and the Union patrol who had showed up minutes later gave them relief. It was a standing order to head back to camp after contact with the enemy. Every shred of information helped the cause, after all.

Halfway back to camp, everything changed.

Not far away from New Haven itself were the remains of a small regional airport. The airport itself was unimportant but for one artifact. When news of the UAS invasion came, the tornado siren mounted on the airport tower had been removed. It was an older model, sturdy enough to withstand decades of ice and rain and wind. It was purely mechanical, operated by a crank and a strong arm. The bell system long used by New Haven and adopted by other communities was perfectly good for short to medium range warnings. The siren was only to be used under one circumstance, and the predetermined orders that went with it had been drilled into their heads.

The siren began to wail over their heads. The three of them shared furtive glances, then began to sprint toward the camp.

It was the signal for an all-out attack. Kell tried to work out what had happened, but had no information to draw from. He gave it up as a bad job, mostly because it really didn't matter. Any of a hundred things could have occurred to necessitate total mobilization. It was a miracle the situation hadn't deteriorated earlier.

The siren continued to blare, warning the people in the fallback camps to evacuate. Many of them would scatter into the hills, spreading themselves out into tiny cells. They were supposed to run, to find a new home somewhere distant enough to be free of the UAS, but Kell had his doubts. Those people had fought and bled together, killed together. If money still mattered, he would have bet every dollar he had ever earned that most of them would stay close even in the event of defeat, and fight to their last breath.

The sky had begun to lighten, the first wash of gray rising in the east. Kell, Lee, and Laura caught a ride on a transport heading out of the main camp. The siren meant all previous orders were null and void, that they should make best time to the predetermined staging areas. The Union forces already engaged in hit-and-run fights with the enemy would soon be joined by two massive wings of reinforcements.

This is it, Kell realized. This was the moment of truth. Months of fear and worry had hung over him like a storm could that wouldn't leave. The sense of impending doom was gone, evaporated with the realization that things couldn't get worse. They were already there.

Every face in the back of the transport was grim, every mouth silent. What could you say to people who had known nothing but death and struggle for more than three years? What encouragement could sound like anything but empty words?

Lee cleared his throat. “It's been an honor,” he said.

A few people smiled.

“Damn right it has,” Kell said.

Dawn had begun by the time Kell and the others reached the field. The sky was dusted with its first blush, the reds and pinks and oranges blending together in the distance. Shadows still gripped the world, the trees a clump of darkness, but it wouldn't be long before that advantage was gone.

Kell moved with the group, spreading out as they slipped between the trees. Gunfire was nearly constant, distant but growing louder as they approached. Lee and Laura were with him, keeping a few paces away as all the rest spread farther apart. The dim light was more than enough to ensure firm footing and quick movement, and as they raced toward the fight, Kell felt an odd sense of calm.

Oh, the fear was there. In any functional human being, fear in the face of violence and death is the only sane reaction. It was that survival impulse which allowed Kell and the others to live, what pushed them to make—and live with—choices unimaginable before The Fall.

It was a quiet sort of fear, detached from worry. It was an amorphous, bland emotion. Logic prevailed over it, because Kell knew deeply and fully there were only two options.

Live or die. Win or lose. The fear would not tip the dice either way.

When the first soldier appeared, Kell fell into a baseball slide instantly, his spear held at an angle as he skated across the debris littering the forest floor. At the last instant he thrust, the force of his body added to the strength of his arms, and the impact was enough to lift the man bodily. Angular momentum came into play, allowing Kell to transfer the energy of his motion into the dying enemy, flinging him over his shoulder like a bale of hay.

A single gunshot followed, a glance back confirming Lee finishing the job. Kell leaped to his feet, not bothering to wipe the spear clean before resuming his run.

They swept the woods for ten minutes, killing a handful of stragglers as they worked their way inward. The sound of fighting grew louder, joined by the smell of blood and death and burned gunpowder. When they broke through the screen of trees into a band of dense fighting, it was not at all what he expected to see.

It was a small clearing filled with Union and UAS soldiers, neither of whom was trying very hard to kill the other. The reason was obvious; a hundred or more New Breed were savagely attacking both sides. The quarters were tight enough that no one could stand back and let the zombies have their way with the enemy. The only option would have been to run.

Knowing the mentality of survivors, it didn't surprise him at all that the Union forces were unwilling to do so. It wasn't the most logical choice, of course, being a tactic they had used before, but in the heat of battle the more primal drives took over. Kell felt it himself, a deep and powerful urge to destroy the dead men and women regardless of any other factors.

What did surprise him was the reaction of the UAS, who were displaying none of the panic he might have expected. They worked in ragged groups, defending each other doggedly if also sloppier than any Union survivor would allow.

Kell barely slowed, taking it in within a heartbeat, then surged forward with his spear held high.

His scream pierced the air, deep and guttural, and seemed to galvanize the crowd. Lee and Laura crashed into the line of dead men at the same time as him, knives out and armored fist flying.

Kell fought with abandon, barely pausing to find new targets. He didn't try to protect one group over the other, but focused solely on killing the dead. Should one of the UAS decide to shoot him or any of his people, there was precious little he could do about it.