The next zombie was being held off by constant blows from baseball bats, batons, and other blunt objects. The four people trying to avoid being mauled couldn’t quite get past its tight defense. It was easy to protect your head with your arms if you were already dead and didn’t care how much damage your arms took.
Kell walked up behind it and drove an elbow into its lower back. The blow knocked the zombie forward, hands instinctively coming away to regain balance. Kincaid was one of the group, and swung his baseball bat down in a brutal overhead arc. He winked at Kell.
He moved on to the next.
One of Mason’s first instructors insisted there were only two types of combat. Mason disagreed. When asked by one of the many psychiatrists required to examine him why, his reply was that saying there were two ways of fighting was as asinine as saying there were two kinds of food. A short and heated discussion followed, during which the psychiatrist pondered the meaning of Mason comparing combat to life-giving nourishment, and Mason’s reply that sometimes a fistfight is just a fistfight and afterward you want a fucking sandwich.
He was right and the instructor was wrong, but it was a matter of degrees instead of kind. There were two
very
broad categories of combat, within each of which existed a spectrum. His teacher, a grizzled, hateful old bastard named Max, called them hard and soft fighting. Hard fighting was composed of pure science and solid math. An enemy was x distance away and required y amount of destruction to sort him out. Hard fighting was all about definitive facts.
Soft fighting centered on intuition. It relied on training, psychology, and a certain amount of innate talent at reading people and situations combined with a wide scope of knowledge. Mason was good at both. This wasn’t some revelation he’d come up with, but military doctrine that existed as long as standing armies had.
Which was why he wasn’t afraid of popping out of the drainage ditch in the middle of a firefight with smoke and fire everywhere like the world’s deadliest jack-in-a-box. Sure, a stray bullet could fly and hit him in the head and that’s it; lights out. But he might have an aneurysm forming in his brain, or a clog in his arteries, or a giant bird could fall out of the sky and impale him through his guts. The trick wasn’t somehow escaping the odds, which was impossible, but managing them.
Knowing the trick to moving the grate in the pipe meant no one would expect anyone to appear in the middle of the courtyard. The fact that Mason wore all black gave him a certain degree of camouflage, at least in the burning chaos and on a casual glance. Chances were, his scars would immediate call attention to him, but that moment of realization before reaction percolated through the brain and into the nervous system was something he was used to exploiting.
It helped that Greg and Allen drove their car through the roiling smoke and into the compound. Secondary explosions rocked the house in carefully chosen locations as the brothers circled it, tossing small homemade bombs. They weren’t shy with gunfire, either, which was returned unevenly.
Mason raised his rifle—not the beautiful long-distance affair he’d left behind, but an assault rifle—and moved in a wide lateral arc around the house. He put three-round bursts through the nearest window, which bellowed smoke as the glass shattered. A face appeared in it, attracted by the sudden thinning of the smoke, and the mercenary began to climb out.
Killing the man didn’t cause Mason to slow a bit.
Part of him shuddered at the thought of putting his back to the barn since any structure could serve as a potential hiding spot for his enemies, but he’d watched the place all morning. No one had moved more than a dozen yards from the main house. It seemed unlikely in the extreme these mercenaries had the foresight and discipline to station men for hours at a stretch inside a half-destroyed building on the off chance someone assaulted the compound.
Managing risks sometimes meant taking them.
The car buzzed around the house and in front of Mason, then sped out through the missing section of fence. More sporadic gunfire spewed from the north side of the house, and fired at it from a shallow angle. Almost no chance he’d hit anyone. That wasn’t the point. Almost before the bullets were out of the barrel, Mason reversed course and sidled up close to the house in a crouch.
He came to rest at the corner, raised the rifle, and aimed at the door on the opposite side of the house from the windows he shot at. As predicted, the men inside saw the car speeding away and, not realizing someone was on foot inside the fence, took their chance to get out.
It was rotten luck that the first man out swept his weapon left instead of right, though through the haze and given the minimal silhouette Mason provided, he still might have missed seeing him. Mason fired another careful burst, stitching a line upward from elbow to neck.
The second man didn’t reel back fast enough and caught another burst. Mason’s aim had been hasty, however, and missed wide of the center mass and caught the man’s gun hand and weapon instead.
Whoever was behind was smart enough not to poke their head out, so Mason scuttled along the wall once more until he was a few yards from the doorway. He pulled a grenade, one of the few military issue ones left in the RV’s stores, and stepped out to toss it in a sidearm throw.
“Fuck!” someone bellowed inside.
A gout of smoke and shrapnel jettisoned from the door as a rolling wave of sound battered Mason’s ears. This was the worst part. The approach was hard, sure, but short of entering the grounds he could have run off at any time. The first minute of terrified confusion was when he was at his most effective. He could take advantage of the will to live overriding training and common sense, like the guy trying to climb through the window.
Now they were starting to think rationally, and that made his job harder. Fortunately, there were only so many places the enemy could hide, and unless they wanted to die from smoke inhalation, coming outside would be unavoidable.
The sound of the car returning from its planned loop across the field caught his attention, but Mason didn’t even turn his head fully when the sound of splintering wood behind him became his entire universe.
Goddammit, he’d let himself get cocky. Tunnel vision from focusing too hard on the men in the house and around the vehicles caused him to forget the basement. Of
course
there were men in it. Hadn’t they been clearing it out? It was the entire purpose of the attack.
Stupid. If not for the desperate life and death struggle, he’d have kicked himself.
He spun and spat bursts of fire at the dark maw in the side of the house. Scarlet rippled in the air, showing a hit, and the falling mercenary fired wildly as he toppled back. Not wanting to frame himself against the open door but not seeing any other choice, Mason continued to shoot as he rushed the steps.
Greg and Allen would be here in seconds. They might even see him vanishing down the steps. He desperately hoped they stuck to the plan and cleared the structure.
Nothing to do but descend and hope.
Someone shot at him and missed. At least, by Mason’s definition they missed. The bullet caught the edge of his shirt and seared a hot channel into the side carrying the heaviest scars. Anything short of a penetrating bullet wound didn’t count.
He flung himself forward, curling into a loose ball as he catapulted toward the ground, and rolled. It wasn’t quite the shining example of martial prowess he’d hoped for, but the unexpected motion kept him from getting shot at again for a second.
His eyesight adjusted quickly, revealing a mostly destroyed basement. Two dead men made tangled heaps on the floor, while two others scrambled away from the entrance. Smoke had begun to drift down through the floorboards, but overall the room was clear. Bright work lights stood on tripods and a small generator hummed in the corner beneath a fume hood. Despite the circumstances, Mason couldn’t help approving of that small bit of brilliance; using the lab equipment to keep the exhaust from filling the room.
Mason’s momentum was awkward enough to throw his roll off, sending his shoulder crashing into the floor. It was only for a fraction of a second as his body continued its motion, but it
hurt
. Keeping loose, he let the movement happen and used it to slide to his knees, hands already gripping his rifle. He fired and pushed off from a crouch, trusting his instinct that the shot was good.
He saw the target dropping from the corner of his eye, but wasn’t quite fast enough. His second pull of the trigger happened at the same time the other man fired, sending lances of agony through his left calf, thigh, and outer hip. This took some satisfaction away from seeing his rounds cluster tightly in the upper chest of the shooter, who stumbled back with blood spraying from his mouth.
Mason fell to the floor, swearing at the top of his lungs. He struggled to a sitting position and took stock of the injuries. These definitely counted.
“Fuck!” he muttered as he checked the wounds. The one on his hip had an exit, and judging from the insane flare of agony must have danced with bone. The calf was a through-and-through, not immediately dangerous. It was the hole in his thigh that scared the shit out of him. There wasn’t any arterial spray, but the bullet must have come apart inside. No exit wound.
If he moved around too much, he risked one of the fragments sawing into something important. Mason and the specter of death were old friends, but that didn’t mean he wanted to sit down and have a beer with the reaper if he could avoid it.
Instead of calling for help—pointless until the brothers were done outside and upstairs—he set to trying to minimize the bleeding. The trauma kit strapped to his lower back was still there, thankfully. He packed the wounds and strapped them with tape as quickly and efficiently as possible, fighting back waves of nausea and a sensation of being very distant from the work.
“Shock,” he said to himself, feeling almost drunk. “I’m going into shock.”
It was one of those things you could sometimes work yourself through. He’d broken a leg riding horses with his dad once, a dozen miles from home. A quarter hour of laying still, focusing on his breathing, had allowed him to muscle through it. Years later he’d been stabbed in a bar fight by some asshole who had an argument with Mason’s boyfriend, and had been at the mercy of his body’s reactions. You could never tell, with trauma. Sometimes it worked…
This time it didn’t. Mason’s pride, faint though it was at the moment, told him the loss of blood had a lot to do with it. He knew how dangerous it was, knew the medical jargon, and all he could do was hope his circulatory system corrected before he died. Not that death would necessarily be permanent, but it was a leap he’d rather not take.
From the oddly distant observatory that was his mind, Mason laid back on the floor and listened.
The grinding hiss of tires through dirt, the angry shouts of terrified soldiers. Coughs above him were cut short by gunfire, then sounds of hand-to-hand fighting. Feet thudded and slid across the boards above, low curses and grunts of effort. It was a sort of music, really. A tune he’d heard and played time and again, with its own rhythm and notes.
Time became fluid. For a while it felt frozen, and in his detached wonder at the sensation he forgot to breathe. Only when the aching in his chest reminded him of the necessity did he exhale slightly and then gasp a new, deep lungful.
From there he used his breathing to gauge time, but that was his only means. Everything was so distant. So unimportant. The part of him shaped and molded by decades of training and discipline shouted reminders from the background of his thoughts, but Mason paid almost no mind to the nagging voice. It was a testament to the power of human physiology that it could release just the right chemicals to undermine every bit of rational thought and preparation learned over a lifetime of effort.
“Is he alive?” someone asked a while later.
A hand hovered in front of his face. His eyes opened slowly.
“Yeah,” a second, similar voice said. “Go get the others.”
“On it.” The sound of feet slapping against the stairs echoed through the room.
“That sounds like a song, too,” Mason mused.
He woke up twenty hours later with an intense need to pee, a full-body ache, and an empty space where his stomach should have been.
“Come on,” Emily said, nudging him with her foot again. “We got word from Hal. Mason, Greg, and Allen managed to clear the compound. We’re going back home to gather supplies. If you want to come with, you need to be ready in ten minutes.”
“Ughnnnng” Kell argued. “Uhn.”
“Be that as it may,” Emily said, a smile in her voice, “you’d better come along if you want to salvage any of your work.”
For a minute he considered pointing out that the thumb drive recovered by Mason contained everything he needed to reproduce it, then gave up and got out of bed. It would be easier with samples and materials. Easier and faster.
Moving turned out to be much harder than anticipated. Seeing that he was putting in an honest effort, Emily delayed leaving for a bit. Kell did his morning business—cleaning himself with the seemingly infinite supply of packaged cleaning wipes was no substitute for the shower he desperately wanted—and tossed back two glasses of water before hustling to the truck. Breakfast would have to wait.
Emily was behind the wheel. She handed him a paper bag.
“What’s this?”
“Food,” Emily said. “Some of the kids found a stash of blueberry muffin mix in one of the cabinets. They made them for you. I put some other stuff in there.”
His mouth did a good impression of a waterfall. “I love you. So, so much.”
Emily snorted. “Tell me that when you’re not starving. Besides, I didn’t want to hear you bitch the whole day.”
The drive was blessedly uneventful. Even knowing a battle had been fought at the compound, Kell wasn’t prepared for what he saw.
Sections of fence were bent where something ran into them from the inside. The main house stood, but half of it looked charred. Every window and door looked like a mouth to hell had opened through them, wide swaths of black soot leading up from them. The ground was pocked with small craters and crisscrossed with gashes from speeding vehicles. A stack of naked bodies burned in the shallow pit reserved for the job, though it was usually filled with zombies.
Hal waited next to the RV his troop lived and traveled in. Kell didn’t know the man well, having rarely had a chance to speak with him, but the group had been solid and reliable. Also, Mason trusted them, and that went a long way.
“Where are the others?” Kell asked when the truck stopped and Hal approached the open window.
The older man ran a hand over his vast gray beard. “Helping Judith inside. Mason needed surgery, Greg and Allen both got hurt, though not as bad. One of the kids is helping them while the other two work on Mason with Judith.”
“Is he okay?” Kell asked, realizing how idiotic the words sounded as soon as he said them. Of course Mason wasn’t okay, if he needed surgery. “How bad is it, I mean?”
Hal blew out a breath, which ruffled his thick mustache. “He was worse when we found him. When we met, I mean. Judith said he wasn’t actually in bad shape for the most part. She had to take out some bullets. The worry seems to be nicking an artery with pieces of them. Mason was talking out of his head about it when the brothers hauled him out of the house.”
“Damn,” Kell said. “I want to wait here in case something happens, but…”
“Oh, I know,” Hal assured him. “I worry too. But there’s nothing either of us can do they aren’t already doing. Judith told me to hang out here for you, then give you the rundown of what we have on hand. Want to walk with me?”
Kell cast a glance at Emily, who shrugged. “Kincaid and a couple other people are keeping watch outside the fence. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
The house was first on the list. “Looks worse than it is,” Hal explained. “Greg and Allen used these homemade things that put off a hell of a lot of smoke but not much fire. The armory didn’t get touched.” He pointed toward the barn. “Doesn’t look like they found the fuel tanks under the floor. I uncovered the gauges while I was waiting for you. Still all there.”
Kell looked at the still-smoking wreckage of the mercenary vehicles in the yard. “It’s a miracle those didn’t do more damage. Mason’s work, I assume?”
Hal grinned. “That’s what I’m told. Car fires aren’t that bad, especially when they happen on top of bare dirt like these. Honestly, I think the three of them did a pretty good job not fucking this place up.”
Emily, who had been observing thoughtfully, sighed. “It’s too bad we’ll have to burn it to the ground once we leave.”
“What?” Kell said. “Why?”
Her lips pursed as if she’d bitten into something awful. “We can’t leave it here for anyone else to find. Think about it. This place is remote and with a few weeks of work would be a solid place to live again. Anyone could stumble on it and decide to move in. If Rebound is still after us, they could mistake squatters for us. Anyone who lives here is going to be targeted.”
“Damn,” Kell said again.
The lab wasn’t a total loss, but the difference was negligible. The various fires had taken their toll on the paperwork and journals, and without power the biological samples and cultures were useless. He spent an hour searching through everything he could find and tossing useful stuff in his backpack. Everything else went on the flames with the bodies of the invaders. He wanted to leave nothing behind that would help the enemy.
Greg and Allen reappeared during that time, bandaged in several places each but otherwise fine. The three teens, whose names Kell never could remember, stayed in the RV to assist Judith.
“Want any help?” Greg, the thick-chested of the two, asked Kell as he threw the last pile of ruined papers on the fire.
“I’m done with the basement, but I was going to look around if you want to come with,” Kell said, eyeing them. “You guys up to it?”
Allen, the one with the slimmer, lanky frame, waved an arm bandaged from palm to bicep. “Mostly just burns. We’ll manage. Lead the way.”
The three men worked their way through the compound’s haphazard structures slowly. The barn was a total loss as a building, though Hal was correct that the buried fuel tanks were fine. The cold house, which was basically an absorption refrigerator the size of a large shed, was also in bad shape. It looked like someone trying to get away sideswiped it with a tank; one entire wall of the heavily insulated building was crushed inward.
“Don’t guess we’ll be getting any food from that,” Greg observed.
Kell shrugged. “Maybe. There was a lot of cured meat inside. It can survive not being cold. Only one way to find out.”
As it happened, they did recover a fair amount of food from the shack. It took all three of them to wrangle the door from is crooked frame, and even then Kell had to put his back into the collapsed wall to keep it from falling in on everyone.
“I’ll sort all this and get it stored,” Allen offered. “Don’t want to make Emily do all the work.”
Kell chuckled. “I’d almost like to see you try that, except I’ve had all the blood on me I want in the last two days.”
He knew they’d find something terrible in the low row of communal housing before they opened the first door. The smell from outside was faint but obvious. Bodies.
There were less of them inside the plywood shacks than he would have thought. Eleven total, though only two had died of gunshot wounds. The others had taken injuries—the dozens of shafts of light streaming in from outside made it clear someone had unloaded on the place—but hadn’t been killed outright. Rather than suffer and risk coming back to harm the living, they’d killed themselves. Or, as Kell noted upon further thought, a few had killed the others. Three bodies had blades jutting out from skulls, others simply had knife wounds to the skull.
“I don’t…do you need me in here for this?” Greg asked, his voice weak.
Kell shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I’m just looking for anything useful, but I’m not going to search top to bottom. Why don’t you go check the outlet for the escape tunnel, see if anyone made it out that way.”
Looking grateful, Greg sped off. Kell picked up a few things, mostly items like knives that had a lot of utility for their size, and left as quickly as possible.
The air outside felt less oppressive. Emily made her way over to him.
“I saw Greg run off,” she said. “Everything okay?”
“Not really. I mean, look at this place. We let ourselves get comfortable here. We started to feel safe.”
“Happy, you mean,” she said, a shrewd note in the words. “Everyone here let themselves feel happy for the first time in ages, and those motherfuckers took it away.”
Kell nodded. “Five years ago I’d have hardened at this. I
did
do that. Cut myself off. Now, though…even seeing my home like this, feeling so…”
“Violated?” Emily suggested.
“Yes,” Kell said. “Exactly. Violated. All that, and losing Laura and who knows who else, I don’t feel it happening all over again. The part of me that shut down before just isn’t reacting the same way.”
Emily cocked an eyebrow. “You sound surprised.”
“A little. I mean, I was a worried on the drive over, thinking about what we’d see, how much it would bring back. Losing another home is hard, but it’s not as hard as it was before.”
She smiled at him. “My dad used to yell at me not to climb trees. ‘Bones heal stronger,’ my mom always said.”
That much was true. It had taken him years, but the scars were tough things. They held fast where he had been vulnerable. “Is it weird that despite what I just saw in there, I’m kind of excited that we’ll have some resources to use? How morbid is that?”
Emily pointed to the fence. “No more morbid than receiving an inheritance. Look out there, Kell. All those plants? They’re food we can harvest and take with us. Early yet, but still edible.” She pointed to the barn. “That gas will get us back to Haven.” Toward the armory. “Those weapons will keep us safe. You can mourn—
should
mourn—what we lost here. But at least you can take a little solace in the fact these people died in the name of a bigger cause. And that we can at least keep carrying on.”
He felt a wave of affection for her, so powerful and pervasive it tightened his chest. Then he laughed, hard and loud. Emily looked at him sideways. “What could you possibly have found funny?”
“I was just wondering if you ever get tired of having to give me these pep talks,” Kell said.
“Oh, lord yes,” Emily said. “You’re a perpetual teenager. The angst is so thick I could cut it with a knife. But you’re worth it.” She narrowed her eyes. “Usually.”
They continued on for a while, sifting through the scattered remains of their home. They added pieces and parts but found no large caches. Kell pointed out that the scattered caches outside the compound might yield more usable supplies, and Emily informed him that the brothers had checked only to find most of them ransacked.
It was oddly comforting. The missing gear was hidden, implying that others had escaped. Kell didn’t know why they hadn’t made the rendezvous, but it didn’t matter to him. Whether they saw the destruction of the compound and decided enough was enough or just hadn’t shown up yet, it gave him hope.
That feeling stayed with him even when they found Laura and set her body in the house before lighting a trail of gasoline. The battered wooden frame served as the best funeral bier Kell could think of. It was only fitting she and the home she had given everything for burned together.