The Fall (Book 3): War of the Living (24 page)

Familiar faces worked in the yard, raising chain link fence in sections. A good deal of the fence was already up, braced and reinforced every few feet. Where it wasn't finished, poles dotted the ground in regular intervals, stretching in a great circle whose edge vanished in the distance.

People stopped work as the RV and the rest of the convoy approached, pulling off gloves and tucking them into belts and pockets. Kell shook his head in wonder as he pulled into the long driveway, the gate being pulled open by two pairs of workers.

“Wow,” Laura said.

“Yeah,” Lee added. “I thought we'd be...I don't know, living rough for a while. This is crazy.”

They piled out of their vehicles, hands raised in greeting to the approaching swarm of friends. One face in the crowd stood out to Kell. It was thin, though healthier than the last time he'd seen it. The beard, shot with silver, was trimmed rather than the overgrown tangle it had been before. It was the eyes which caught his attention more than anything. Those eyes had been edged with anxiety and terror—not to mention a bit of madness—on that last meeting. Now they shone with a familiar brightness not seen since before The Fall began.

“About time you showed up,” John said, extending his hand.

Kell laughed, pushed the hand to the side, and picked his friend up in a crushing bear hug.

“No worries,” Kell said. “I'm home.”

“How the hell did you manage all this?” Kell asked as John showed him around the basement.

There were lights burning, the smooth glow of electricity the least surprising element of the place. There was more equipment than seemed possible, certainly more than they had brought to the previous house from the bunker John had been holed up in.

“When your people first showed up, they brought a lot of extra fuel. Two of them went on a trade run with some group and brought back even more. We used it to go back to the bunker and bring this stuff.” He waved a hand casually at the fully-stocked lab which took up the entirety of the basement. “Then they decided the other place was too small and too close to the bunker, so your friend Dan went out looking for somewhere better suited to a large group.”

The brief pass Kell had taken around the grounds had revealed many unexpected sights. Three small wind turbines hummed as they spun, along with a good number of solar panels. They, along with banks of batteries, were among the first items ripped from the bunker and hauled here. It was an advantage Kell hadn't imagined having, one which would make their research much easier.

There was a smaller version of the huge absorption refrigeration unit New Haven had built to keep meat edible, this one twelve feet on a side and eight tall. It looked like any other building from the outside, and shabby at that, but within was an insulated environment—it even had a sort of airlock to keep most of the cold air in—which would be useful in several ways.

Crops were growing, and they would be the second harvest of the year. More than a hectare of potatoes thrived within the area the fence would cover, enough to feed them for a very long time. Several mobile homes had been hauled on their wheels to serve as additional housing, joined by a smattering of school buses, motor homes, tents, and even a shipping container. There was even a system for catching and filtering rain, along with enough water storage to allow them to endure within the fence for months without leaving, if it came to it.

“This is amazing,” Kell said. “I can't believe how much work you've done here.”

John grinned crookedly. “Well, your friends did most of it. They insisted I put in as much time in the lab as possible. For a few weeks, two of them were always gone. I can't imagine what the bunker looks like now, with its fridges, water, and power systems all ripped out. And look! They brought all the other research, and all the equipment. You really should thank them.”

“I will,” Kell assured him. “For putting all this together, for planting crops, for keeping you safe. Not to mention being willing to drop everything to come here.”

John laughed. “They were happy to see others begin to show up a few months ago,” he said. “That was when most of this really came together.”

Kell spent a few minutes wandering the lab, flipping through notes and memorizing where things were. As he explored, he talked about the things he had learned while sorting through medical records at New Haven, and about Josh's injury and temporary death.

Through it all, John listened intently. If Kell had been the creative force behind Chimera, the one thinking up all the ways it could be utilized, John was the workhorse. He had as much experience as Kell in working with it, his knowledge as thorough. When Kell finished talking, he saw John tapping his chin distractedly, deep in thought.

“I know that look,” Kell said. “Talk to me.”

John shook his head slightly, coming back to reality. “Oh, sorry.” He stood and began searching through a shelf stacked with binders and notebooks. “Here it is,” he said, handing a spiral notebook to Kell.

“What is it?”

John pointed to the book. “It's from about six months ago. I've been studying my own tissue samples a lot. I take new ones every two weeks. What you told me about your friend? I predicted it, or something like it.”

He jogged over to a work table, pulling a similar notebook from a stack. “This is where I've been recording everything I've noticed about myself. We'll have to do a lot of research to be certain, but I think this is a result we'll see a lot. It's probably widespread.”

“Not universal, though,” Kell said. “I read a lot of reports in New Haven. There are kids being born without Chimera in their system at all.”

John's eyes blazed. “An immunity? That's...”

“Unexpected, yeah. That's what I thought. I'd really like to study one of those children. Might be a way for us to use their immunity to stop the zombies without affecting the living.”

“Do you think that's the right decision? To leave people infected?”

Kell chewed the inside of his lip, a habit he hadn't indulged in since before the world had ended. “I don't know. One thing I'm sure of is that I don't have the right to make those sorts of calls on my own. Not after what Chimera has done.”

John put a hand on Kell's arm, as being a foot shorter made reaching any higher awkward. “That wasn't your fault, Kell.”

“I know that,” Kell said. “For a long time, I couldn't believe it, but I do now. But whether it's my fault or not, the consequences are the same. My work did this, and I want to make sure however we move forward, it's a shared choice.”

He glanced around the lab. “Whatever the next step is, we all take it together or not at all.”

Everyone settled in surprisingly quickly. A few days after Kell's convoy arrived, a second group showed up. These were some of Josh's friends, a core group who had decided to migrate as well. There weren't many of them, but they were welcome. All of them learned Kell's identity and the true purpose of their new home before deciding whether to come.

“You don't know these people,” Lee had said when he learned about the people joining them. “Aren't you worried?”

Kell explained why he wasn't; he trusted Josh to know his friends, and Josh trusted them. Simple.

A weight had been lifted from his shoulders almost as soon as he saw the farm, but it took nearly a week for him to figure out what it was.

It was late August, a balmy night in central Iowa. The fence was almost finished, and behind the house a familiar scene unfolded. Nearly sixty people gathered, seated on stumps and camp chairs, behind card tables and planks nailed to timbers at the last minute. In the center sat a beat-up picnic table, reassembled hundreds of miles from where it began.

Candles burned on every surface, casting soft light across the faces of men and women, children and teenagers, who had all seen more horror than anyone should ever have to endure. The warm luminescence made them beautiful—or rather, more so—even as it glinted from weapons kept close at hand.

Lee sat on Kell's left, Laura at his right. Andrea was on Laura's right, and if anyone but Kell noticed her occasionally brushing Laura's hand and sharing a playful glance, they said nothing about it. Across the table sat Josh and Jess, their friend Kincaid next to him and one of the new arrivals next to her. Courtney, Kell thought her name was.

A buzz of conversation filled the air, punctuated by laughter and the occasional slap on the back. The food was plentiful if plain, and even a boring meal was a blessing in so harsh a world. Food, water, shelter. These were the necessities of survival. People rarely mention friends and acceptance, mostly because you don't need those things to survive.

But you can't really
live
without them.

Kell was listening to Jess tell an incredibly dirty joke when understanding washed over him. The burden he had carried for so long was gone; he could simply be himself. Kell McDonald. Scientist. Architect of Chimera. Father. Husband.

The fear under which he had lived to one degree or another was gone, replaced by a breed of relief unimaginable a few years before. Not one of the people around him was unaware of who he was or what he had done, but they welcomed him. They loved him, and he them.

That was not the burden itself, only the symptom. The weight had been the loss of his wife, daughter, and parents. It was the black hole of living in a world without family.

Looking at the sea of faces around him, Kell knew he had one again.