Revelation Day (The Fall Book 6) Read online

Emily turned to the younger woman. “Smelled you. You were working in the lab until a few minutes ago, and some of the stuff you guys use in there tends to stick on the clothes.”

  Jo took a seat next to Emily and wrapped her arms around her knees. The two sat in companionable silence for a while, just watching the sky. They had no hot gossip to share, no worries about others, no purpose behind sitting and looking at the stars beyond the simple joy of doing so. The apocalypse taught many lessons, almost beyond listing. The one Emily felt the deepest was the importance of now. Of taking hold of every chance for a little happiness no matter how small.

  After a long time, Jo lay back with her arms behind her head and broke the silence. “Do you think it’ll last? The peace, I mean?”

  Emily considered the many ways the words could be interpreted, and the many answers those interpretations had. “I think things around here will be fine for a while. The wars seem to be over, at least with those guys to the south. The relationship there has been getting better and better for a few years now.”

  Jo tsked her. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “Yeah,” Emily said. “Don’t know what to tell you, kid. We’ve seen how people coming from bunkers act. They don’t have grounding in how the world is now. They think they know best or can do it better than us, almost every time. The people in Rebound territory might even buy it, but a lot of them won’t be up for a large-scale conflict. They just want to live and be left alone like the rest of us.”

  Not that Will or the other Union leaders were counting on that.

  Every attempt at a diplomatic solution required a contingency plan in case of failure. Theirs just happened to take the form of a man.

  Mason

  The guys manning the checkpoint had the suitably hardened look of genuine survivors. Well, except for the one in charge. He’d clearly lived outside a bunker for a long while, weather beaten and with a newish scar over one eye, but he hadn’t adapted to the idea of constant danger. Hackneyed as the trope was, you really could always tell from the eyes. People who lived outside internalized the need to constantly scan the area around them for zombies and other threats, but paradoxically almost always appeared relaxed. This guy didn’t look around often at all but had the nervous energy of a virgin on his first date.

  “I said you’ll have to leave your weapons here, sir,” the boss said.

  Mason gestured lazily with one hand, a move that caught the attention of everyone in the room. Part of the diplomatic process was sending a detailed description of the envoy, so Mason knew they were aware of who he was. He’d killed enough of their people to warrant caution. “Yeah, I heard you say that. But it’s like I heard you say I need to flap my arms really hard and fly, because both are things that are only gonna happen in your dreams.”

  The boss was wired the way most people were in that he only had a few ways of categorizing reactions. A calm response to his request, his brain told him, went along with surrendering the gear. Not giving up the truly impressive collection was tied inextricably to anger or defensiveness. Mason’s even manner and utter refusal to give an inch was fucking with his head.

  Which was the point, obviously.

  “Then I’m afraid we can’t let you go any farther,” the supervisor said, bracing for the storm.

  Mason shrugged. “Okay. Fine with me. I’ll hop on my horse and go home. You can radio your boss and explain why the guy sent to negotiate terms to get your people the cure for the plague is moving in the wrong direction. I’m sure that’ll go well for you.”

  The supervisor—god bless these people for forcing bureaucracy rather than letting form on its own out of necessity—went pale. To Mason’s surprise, however, he held his ground. “We can’t allow someone as dangerous as you to move through our settlements armed. I have a responsibility to the citizens in my sector.”

  Mason pursed his lips in thought. “Look, kid, I respect that. Really, I do. But there’s some facts here you’re not taking into consideration.”

  The kid brightened slightly, and Mason sighed inwardly. Jesus, to be that young and hopeful. He almost felt bad. “I’m listening,” he said, eyes locked on Mason.

  “Had I wanted to invade you or whatever, I would have killed the lady at the outpost,” Mason said. “I could have shot every one of you guys in a few seconds. It wouldn’t have been hard, or exactly a new experience for me. If I had even the slightest interest in hurting people who didn’t try to hurt me first, I could already have done more damage than you can imagine. Hell, I could kill all of you right now before you had a chance to even understand what was happening.”

  He let that sink in for a few seconds. The results were predictable. Hands tightened on pistols, mouths hardened into lines, bodies went still as muscles tensed into springs ready for motion. Mason reacted to these troubling articles of body language as he always did, which is to say not at all.

  “Let’s not pretend that my ability to hurt people is relevant to how many weapons I’ve got,” Mason said. He waved a hand down his face. “This right here is why I carry so many. If you’re ever unlucky enough to survive being mauled by a dozen zombies, you’ll probably develop a strong affinity for self-defense, too. And since I have a long-ass way to ride, I’m probably going to run into zombies at some point. I’m not doing that unarmed.”

  The kid was unnerved at casually being told how little a threat he represented. Mason found himself respecting the guy a bit more for not doing what most twentysomethings would and turning the bravado up to eleven. “Let me radio in and see what I can do.”

  He scampered off to a back room, shutting a door loudly behind him. Mason stood patiently, one elbow resting on the counter. The checkpoint was a gas station in a former life, old with worn and uneven linoleum. The remaining troops—because Mason saw them for what they were—held themselves like wary dogs, which he also respected.

  “That how it is all over?” Mason asked almost absently as he gazed at the closed door.

  One of the guards, an older man, frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Mason hiked a thumb at the door. “People from Rebound put in charge of survivors. We saw it happen with the war a few years ago. Folks in bunkers down south came out and tried the whole ‘start a new civilization with us in charge’ thing and it didn’t work out real well. But that was mostly because they did it as a means of recruitment so they could fight a stupid war with people hundreds of miles away.”

  The older man grunted. “It’s not too bad. The kid listens to us most of the time. Way they explained it to us is that it’s less about trying to tell us what to do than maintain clear lines of communication. He’s our link to that ugly shitbox they call the Spire, and when we need something they usually come through. So it works out.”

  “That’s good,” Mason said. “Hell, I wish we had that kind of efficiency. In the Union everyone thinks they know best because they’ve been out here in the shit since day one. Too many cooks, you know?”

  A round of small nods and tight smiles. It never ceased to amaze him how much intelligence could be gathered by shooting the breeze and bitching about your own situation. The only hard part was selling the lie.

  “Come on, Jessup,” Mason said to the horse a few minutes later. He didn’t bother hopping back on. He could have gone on another ten, twelve hours if necessary. The more the Chimera in his body spread and replaced damaged tissue, the more energy he had. Kell said it was because when the stuff replicated the function of lost parts, it basically acted like younger versions of your own skin or liver or whatever it replaced. Though that wasn’t really accurate either, since mostly Chimera added to what was there. He’d never have an entirely new liver, sadly, but Chimera would make sure it functioned extremely well and take up some of the load itself.

  No, despite the slow return of what felt like youthful zeal, Jessup was tired and needed a break. Mason would kill if needed and run himself near to death when on mission, but the horse had carried him six hundre
d miles. Now that he was close to the goal, there was no reason not to give the poor guy a chance to recover.

  Jessup ate an apple Mason cut up for him as they walked. One thing New America certainly had in abundance were fruit trees. When the slightly nervous kid sent him on his way, he’d made a point to let Mason know that anyone could take what they needed from the trees. From the mismatched grass and earth at the base, he assumed orchards had been systematically stripped of trees and had them transported to various places.

  The mind wanted to boggle at the resources needed to do such a thing, but the whole point of Rebound was a concentration of resources sufficient to jump start a new civilization. Fuel, trucks, and transplant machinery weren’t impossible things to manage if you planned ahead.

  “What do you think, fella?” Mason said to the horse. “Reckon we’ll find a spot to crash that doesn’t get watched by every guy with a scope on his gun within a mile of here?”

  Jessup, merrily chewing his apple, chose not to reply.

  “Yeah, me either.”

  He led Jessup off the road, heading toward a hollow carved into a large copse of trees. Once he was within the semicircle, Mason went about his normal camp routine. After all his travel, he didn’t have to think about it. In addition to pulling the bedroll and his other pieces of gear, the saddle also came off. Normally Mason would have left it on, something Jessup disliked but tolerated, but his desire to give the tired horse a break made the risk of needing to ride away in a hurry and not having him saddled worth it.

  Mason didn’t bother tying Jessup before wandering into the woods to gather kindling. The people of Haven trained their horses well. The big guy was used to standing guard near Mason’s things while he moved about.

  Instincts honed over the last few years kept him relentlessly scanning for zombies the way the checkpoint supervisor hadn’t. Yet Mason needed that vigilance less and less as time went on. Many people seemed surprised by this, but to someone who had seen—and helped make—regimes fall, Mason wasn’t. The world was not and never had been a static place. The influence of human beings on their environment could not be overstated.

  Just as it was easy to see the world as it had been, with its luxuries and supermarkets and social media, as permanent, so was the view of the world after civilization fell. It amazed him. These same people were integral in making changes, in rebuilding that civilization, yet they were blind to the very changes wrought with their own hands.

  Of course, things didn’t usually change fast. Mason found that out when he approached the edge of the trees near his little camp. Jessup was snorting irritably, the sound echoing faintly between the boles of the trees. The reason was obvious; a small pack of zombies shambled slowly a few hundred feet away.

  New America, a name Mason found irritating and presumptuous for Rebound to have given their territory, was famous for how few zombies could be found within its borders. Every traveler, trader, and expat mentioned it. Mason wasn’t surprised, however. He was still in the warm zone between the outer watch towers and the inner swath of towns where patrols and defenses stopped the zombies cold.

  Nor was he particularly shocked that a pack would happen by him, mostly because he doubted it was any sort of coincidence. There looked to be six or seven, a perfect number to gauge the ability of a lone traveler without making it obvious you’d herded them right toward him.

  He didn’t waste energy running out to them. Instead Mason dropped his kindling next to the spot he’d stomped flat for the fire and took his time unlimbering a few weapons. Jessup eyed him, as if asking what the delay was.

  “I’m tired, man,” Mason said to the horse. “I’m not walking my happy ass over there.”

  The pack began to spread apart as it grew closer, the faster zombies picking up the pace as a potential meal seemed imminent. Mason moved a dozen feet to Jessup’s left, drawing the attention of dead eyes. He didn’t feel any particular fear. Even without his armored clothing and gloves, the steel bars in his hands would have been plenty of protection.

  In a true Romero moment, the first zombie came at him with hands raised straight out in front of her. Mason didn’t bother with the head shot, choosing instead to swing the metal batons together. He was a big man and strong as an ox. The zombie’s forearms didn’t stand a chance. This didn’t pain the thing, but the momentary distraction was more than enough time for Mason to plant a boot in its hip and push.

  Horses by their nature are skittish and reactionary. War horses throughout history have been trained to deal with everything from the smell of blood to the glitter of swords, even gunshots. The modern war horse didn’t shy away from the smell or sight of zombies and could be taught to capitalize on a downed opponent.

  Shod hooves crashed into the zombie’s head a split second after Mason kicked it over.

  “Thanks, buddy,” he said.

  A pair of zombies came at him, though really the whole pack was close enough by then to make it a group effort. The two nearest worked in clumsy unison, attacking from two sides. Mason let one of them sink its teeth into the armored sleeve of his coat and knocked the grasping arms of the other out of the way with the baton in his left hand. Before the zombie could reset itself, he’d whipped the rod around again and smashed its tip into the zombie’s temple.

  The rest of the pack slowed. Zombies didn’t quite have a predator’s instincts. The bit they lacked was self-preservation. Oh, New Breed and Smarties were a different story of course, but the ones attacking Mason were old school. They didn’t have any of the weird variations in Chimera that made some zombies true nightmares to deal with.

  Yet they did react to some stimuli. Kell explained it to him once as a result of how zombies process smells. That was how they hunted. Living people exuded fear smells. Kell theorized that the repeated instances of zombies showing what looked like fear when Mason was involved might actually be confusion. They didn’t get any of the normal pheromones scared prey put out.

  Which was fine with him.

  Mason head-butted the zombie attached to his arm like an overexcited leech, kicked its knee in backward, and brought both batons down on its face as it toppled. It was a reflexive display of coordination and strength, one Mason was sure would make whoever was watching think twice about coming after him themselves.

  The pack decided he might be tasty after all and swarmed him, four bodies pressing close. He didn’t flinch as fingers whose tips were worn to jagged bone skated across his flesh. Short of nicking an artery, there was no damage they could do to him he had not already suffered. Those withered hands held no mystery for him. He did duck his head as one semi-clever dead man went for his eyes, but that was as close as Mason came during the fight to looking concerned.

  He outweighed the heaviest of them by fifty or sixty pounds and used every ounce of it. The zombies were focused on one thing, eating him. They didn’t have finesse or any sort of tactical thinking. Mason did. A small movement of his hip checked one zombie into another, giving him space and a few seconds to lash out to damage another. Each attack created openings for more attacks, a geometric progression of deliberate chaos that gave him an ever-widening advantage. Like a series of controlled explosions broke open a face of unyielding stone to lay bare the riches of the earth.

  It was almost beautiful how effective small pushes in just the right weak spots could be.

  That was going to come in handy.

  Kell

  He was fighting with Emily when the news came in. Not arguing, they rarely did that, but sparring in the square of dirt set aside within the walls of the hangar compound for training. Learning combat was as ubiquitous now as learning geometry had been before the Fall. Every place had a space like this, some flat ground surrounded by racks of weapons.

  This dirt was special. Kell might not be one for grand gestures, but even he was touched by this one. Mason had left not long after Rebound agents had kidnapped him and taken his leg. No one asked where he was going, and the quartermaster
in Haven was too scared to refuse the man the fuel and vehicle he requested.

  Mason came back a week later with a collection of personal items, some of them badly burned, and two jars full of familiar reddish dust and dirt. He’d gone back to their home in Iowa. The jugs he emptied on the sparring ground. As motivation, he said.

  Two days of vacation were enough to convince Kell he needed to find the time to truly get used to his prosthetic. Emily worked with him, putting him through one movement drill after another. They did Tai Chi at first to acclimate his body to the complex motions needed for combat, and then basic movement drills.

  The results were encouraging. Not spectacular by any means, but the mountain of doubt and anxiety on Kell’s shoulders at the thought of getting into the fight shrank significantly. He was both out of practice and comparatively out of shape, and even if he weren’t, things were different. Missing a limb meant operating under different conditions.

  If his old level of ability was the gauge, Kell was clumsy and slow. But the progress was there. Just the practice alone was enough to build a little more confidence and feel out the flaws in his coordination. It would take a lot of time and effort to regain proficiency, if ever, but he already had a few gross improvements. At the very least he felt capable of throwing a punch without losing his balance.

  Which was why he didn’t mind so much that the runner from Haven interrupted his workout. It would have been much more annoying to be pulled away when he was doing badly. Maybe not for most people, but Kell had always liked having progress to go back to in any project. Probably a big factor in why he’d done so well at school. Nerd enthusiasm for the win.

  “Doctor McDonald,” the runner said, slightly out of breath.

  Kell mopped sweat off his face with a towel. “Just Kell is fine, son. What’s up?”

  The runner handed him a note in a sealed envelope and stepped back. “I’m supposed to wait for a response and carry it back to Mister Price.”