Fall of Man (Book 1): The Break Read online

  “No,” Dante, the kid, said. “I’m not sure anyone does. The news cut out pretty fast after the first reports of people killing each other in our city. I guess even the reporters had better things to do than go out there and try to get answers. Heck, half of them probably turned into crazed maniacs themselves.”

  “Half of them?” Cole thought. Try most of them, kid.

  He said, “How long before the news went offline?”

  “Around seven,” Dante said. “After that, I had to resort to this.” He patted a ham radio sitting on a table next to him. “I was able to get reports from other parts of the country for a while. All the way up to about midnight. Then everything just went quiet.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. Silence.”

  “Nothing from the government?” Cole asked.

  “Zilch. A big, fat nada.”

  The kid leaned slightly forward in his chair and for a brief second or two, Cole was afraid he might fall off. It was unfounded fear, because Dante clearly knew everything about what his wheelchair was capable of. That was why the kid had seemed so low to the ground when Cole first saw him; because he was confined and couldn’t have revealed himself any higher via the window, even if he’d wanted to.

  Sharp and intelligent eyes moved from Cole to Zoe, and even Ashley sitting in the back. “You know what’s happening, don’t you?” Dante asked. “Once upon a time, mankind was a wild animal. We killed, ate, and procreated. That was the full extent of our abilities; our needs. But we changed. We became civilized. Anthropologists have clever names and charts and all that good stuff to show you how it all happened. Basically, we left our reptilian brain behind and achieved a higher status. We evolved.”

  “How do you know any of this?” Cole asked.

  Dante shrugged, as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. “There’s nothing good on TV, and it’s hard for me to go outside. I used to go to public school, but it was pretty lame. So I’ve been homeschooled since I was ten, got my high school equivalency last year, in fact. I’ve been thinking about college; but you know, money and access are hard to come by, so I’ve been doing a lot of online courses. That tends to get a little boring, too—way too easy—so I spend a lot of time reading.”

  “You got all this from reading?”

  “My aunt says I’m a sponge. She also says my biggest problem is that I absorb everything but don’t know what to squeeze back out.” He grinned. “She’s colorful like that.”

  Cole and Zoe exchanged a look. She was like him—not quite sure what to make of Dante. The teenager was probably either fourteen or fifteen, and while he looked frail and helpless, Cole had seen the way he zoomed around the apartment in his wheelchair. Given a straight line outside, in the street, Cole didn’t think he could outrun Dante.

  “What else did you sponge up about all of this?” Cole asked.

  Dante shook his head. “That’s about it. Radio’s dead. Everything’s dead. All I know now is what I can see out that window.”

  “Phones?”

  “Dead.”

  “Internet?”

  “Dead. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “About what?”

  “If this is some natural phenomenon, or if someone’s behind this. I mean, the way everything just went down…” He shrugged. “It makes you wonder. Or it makes me wonder, anyway.”

  The kid had a point, even if Cole hadn’t actually been “wondering” about it until now. Then again, he’d been too busy trying to survive, fighting for his life. By comparison, Dante apparently had a lot of free time to “wonder” about why things were happening. The answers were out there, but Cole still couldn’t give it the attention it needed. Right now, he only had one goal: Get to Emily. Get to Emily at all costs.

  “Where’s your aunt now?” Zoe was asking Dante.

  “I don’t know,” Dante said, leaning back. “She’s a nurse at the city hospital. She didn’t come home last night; had to do an extra shift to pay the bills. I’m going to really miss her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think she’s coming back.”

  “You don’t know that. She could be trying to make her way back home right now.”

  “I hope not.” Then, off Zoe’s confused look, “I’ve been looking out that window all day. I know what’s been happening out there. Yesterday and all morning.” He shook his head. “I really don’t want to think about my aunt being out there alone, trying to come back here.” He looked over at Cole. “I’m pretty sure she’s not as good as you when it comes to self-defense.”

  Cole wasn’t quite sure how to take that. Clearly, Dante had seen the way Cole had bashed in Joe the plumber’s head with the bat, even long after the man was dead. The look in Dante’s eyes as he stared back at Cole told him that the kid had seen everything. Every bloody second of it.

  “I did what I had to,” Cole said.

  “Of course you did,” Dante said. “I wasn’t trying to say anything else.” Then, just like that, “You guys want, like, something to drink or eat, or something?”

  “Food!” Ashley said from her couch, just a little too loudly.

  Dante, Cole, and Zoe all looked over at her at the same time.

  The girl clamped her hands over her mouth, eyes bulging.

  “It’s okay,” Dante said, glancing at the window he’d been leaning out earlier. It was closed, and the curtains were pulled in. “They don’t have super hearing or anything.” Then, with a slightly nervous—or was it mischievous?—smile, “At least, I don’t think so.”

  “What else did you see from that window?” Cole asked between bites of turkey sandwich with warm lettuce and mayonnaise on whole wheat bread.

  “Probably not as much as you,” Dante said. “I’m limited by that rectangle. But you were out there.”

  “I’m curious what you saw, away from the chaos.”

  “My perspective, you mean.”

  “Exactly.”

  Cole hadn’t realized how hungry he was until Dante pulled out the pack of turkey slices from the no-longer-working refrigerator and began slapping sandwiches together with practiced ease. Like the living room, the kitchen had been refitted with the counters lowered for Dante to access them easier. Cole had no trouble understanding how Dante had managed to survive by himself in the twenty-four hours or so since men started devolving to their “reptile brain,” as the kid put it. He had a feeling Dante had been surviving by himself for a while now, even when his aunt was still around.

  “It was weird,” Dante said. “Like I was watching some kind of play.”

  “Play?” Cole said.

  “You know how in plays people would get into their positions, then wait for their cue to act, or talk, or sing? That’s what it looked like out there. It was really, really quiet for the longest time. Or it seemed like a long time, but it was probably not that long. Maybe thirty seconds. Or a minute. I don’t know for sure. It caught me off guard, and I don’t wear a watch. But it felt like thirty seconds to a minute.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “People started turning on each other. Screaming. It started with screaming. Then it got louder. Car accidents. People purposefully ramming into other people on the streets. It was madness.”

  That was a good word for it. Madness. Cole had seen it for himself yesterday.

  So had Zoe, who remained quiet as she sat next to her daughter, eating their sandwiches and listening.

  “But not right away,” Cole said.

  “No,” Dante said, shaking his head. “You noticed it, too?”

  Cole nodded. “There’s a momentary switch. A sort of…pause before they change. Or, as you put it, before they get their cue to act. I saw it with my driver.”

  “You had a driver?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like, a cabbie?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re rich or something?”

  “Or something.”

  “So what happened with you
r driver?”

  “He didn’t change right away. The others didn’t, too. As far as I could tell, they were frozen in place. Then they snapped.”

  Dante nodded. “That’s what I saw, too. People walking around outside, then they just stopped moving, and stared at nothing. I could see people trying to ‘wake’ them up. Then the killings started.” He looked over at Zoe. “What did you see?”

  “I’m not sure,” Zoe said. “I was driving down the street with Ashley, and cars just started ramming into each other. Others were parked in the middle of the road. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just kept driving, until I couldn’t anymore.”

  Dante looked from her to Cole. “So did we learn anything new?”

  “I don’t think so,” Cole said. “At least, nothing that helps us understand what happened. And nothing that helps us get through this alive, which is a lot more important to me right now.”

  “There’s one thing that might help…”

  “What’s that?”

  “They don’t use guns. Did you notice that?”

  “Guns?”

  “Yeah. They don’t use guns. The crazies.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Are you sure? Because I heard gunfire last night.”

  “I did, too, but I never saw any of the crazy ones using guns.”

  “Maybe they didn’t have guns,” Zoe said. “We’re not in Texas, after all.”

  “I saw a couple of cops down there. Crazed ones. And they still had their weapons in their holsters.”

  “You’re 100 percent certain about that?” Cole asked.

  The idea that the crazies had access to weapons but for whatever reason chose not to use them seemed absurd to him. Was that possible? If their minds had snapped and they were determined to kill, a firearm was a hell of a more efficient way to accomplish that.

  “Because we would definitely use a gun if we had one,” the Voice said.

  Damn straight.

  “Definitely,” Dante said. “At first I thought they might have just run out of bullets, but then why’d they keep their guns in their holsters if they did?”

  “Maybe in case they found more bullets,” Cole said.

  Dante shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  The kid seemed to think about it for a moment. Cole had no trouble believing he’d been thinking about it for a while now, even before they showed up.

  “Dante?” Zoe pressed.

  “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have,” Dante said. “I think they prefer to use their hands, or things like knives, bats—whatever they can get their hands on. Something they can hold and feel.”

  “Feel?” Cole said.

  Dante picked up the baseball bat Cole had been carrying around and had leaning against the wall. The kid swung it—or as well as you could swing something while confined to a wheelchair, anyway—and the bat made a swoosh sound as it cut through air.

  “When you swing this, it’s different, right?” Dante said.

  “How so?” Cole said.

  “You can feel it. When you hit that guy out there—the big one…”

  “Remember him?” the Voice asked.

  Cole remembered. He couldn’t forget. He’d bashed the guy’s head in, then kept on swinging until there wasn’t very much left. He’d lost control. It was the first time he’d forgotten who he was—who he had become—since he took on this new life with Emily.

  “What about him?” Cole said.

  “When you took him down with the bat, it’s different than if you’d shot him, right?” Dante said.

  Cole didn’t answer right away.

  “Isn’t it?” the kid said.

  Cole finally nodded. “Yes. It is.”

  “How?” Zoe asked. She was looking at him now. “I know there’s a difference between hitting someone with a bat and shooting them, even though I’ve never done either of those things. But it’s obvious there’s a difference.”

  Cole nodded. “Yeah, there’s a difference.”

  Dante and Zoe seemed to be waiting for him to continue. Even Ashley, sitting nearby, wiping her hands on her pants, looked like she was waiting for Cole to explain what that difference was.

  “They’d never understand,” the Voice said. “They haven’t been where we’ve been. Done what we’ve done. They’d never understand.”

  Cole agreed, and said out loud, “There’s a difference. The kid’s right about that. But I still don’t buy that those crazies had guns but weren’t using them. I heard shooting last night. And you told me you heard it too. Out there?”

  Dante nodded. “Out there and in here.”

  “In here?”

  “It had to be Mr. Ellesway. He used to be a police officer.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In 510.”

  “You mean, on this floor?” Cole asked, probably a little more excited than he’d intended to.

  “Yeah,” Dante said.

  “What are you thinking?” Zoe asked, looking at Cole.

  “I’m thinking I’d really like to get my hands on that gun,” Cole said.

  Chapter 14

  Apartment 510 was two doors down from Dante’s and across the hallway. It was close enough for Cole to decide to take the chance. He might not have been so gung-ho if his trip up from the lobby hadn’t been so uneventful. If Dante’s neighbors were still around (“You mean, still alive?” the Voice asked), then they were being very quiet about it.

  Survivors other than Dante were entirely possible. Dante had managed, and he wasn’t exactly the most physically capable person Cole had ever met. The kid was confined to a wheelchair, for God’s sake. So how many others were out there right now, hunkering down and waiting for signs that things would get better? Maybe waiting for the state to step in? Uncle Sam? A cavalry of some sort?

  “They’re gonna have a long wait,” the Voice said.

  You don’t know that.

  “Don’t I?”

  No. It’s only been one day. Anything is still possible.

  “Listen.”

  Listen to what?

  “Exactly.”

  Cole understood what the Voice was trying to say, because he could hear it, too.

  Or, in this case, not hear it.

  It being every other thing in the universe right now save for his slightly accelerated breathing.

  Christ, why was he breathing so hard? What was he, an amateur?

  “Might as well be, as long as you’ve been retired,” the Voice said.

  That wasn’t an entirely untrue statement. Cole had been retired, though it wouldn’t be considered that long by most people’s standards. But by his own standards, it’d been an eternity since his “retirement.”

  Bottom line: There was a very real chance Dante still had neighbors in the building, waiting. Waiting for what?

  Waiting for something.

  Anything.

  Cole didn’t have that luxury. He couldn’t wait to be told that everything would be okay, that Emily was fine and dandy.

  No. He had to make it happen.

  And to do that, he had to get to her.

  And a gun would sure help in that quest…

  Cole changed up his grip on the aluminum baseball bat, wondering how loud it was going to be if he had to hit someone with it inside the close confines of the hallway. He remembered the loud ping! when he struck Joe the plumber outside in the streets. In these tight hallways, it might be akin to a gunshot.

  A gun. He wanted that gun. The only thing better than a gun was a sword, but a gun beat a sword every day of the week and thrice on Sundays.

  “It’s been a while,” the Voice said. “You can feel it, can’t you?”

  Feel what?

  “Don’t fool yourself. You can feel it.”

  Cole didn’t answer, not that that stopped the Voice. It was, after all, him,
and it knew everything that he knew, including his hidden thoughts.

  “Yeah, you can feel it,” the Voice said with a laugh.

  He paused for a moment and glanced left toward the elevators and stairwell to make sure no one had sneaked onto the floor while he was inside Dante’s. Apartment 503 next door was still open, a wide shaft of light pouring out from the living room beyond. Cole couldn’t smell the telltale signs of dead bodies. Not that he would, just twenty-four hours after everything went to hell. It would take longer than that for the dead to start stinking up the joint.

  “And we both know what bodies smell like, don’t we?” the Voice said.

  Yes, they did. They knew it intimately.

  Cole stood very still, with just the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. He was breathing a lot harder than usual, and he spent half a minute or so calming himself down. It wasn’t like he’d never been in this situation before. Well, maybe not this exact situation, but something close enough.

  He tiptoed his way up the hallway, passing the other closed doors.

  …506 on his left…

  …507 on his right…

  …508 on his left…

  He stopped at 509, thinking he might have heard something moving on the other side.

  Cole flattened his back against the wall and held the bat in front of him, choking up on the grip for a short swing, if necessary. The last thing he wanted was to go for a home run and smack the bat into the wall on the other side. Which was a real possibility, given the limited spaces he was dealing with.

  He waited for the doorknob to start jingling, signaling that he hadn’t misheard the sound. It was possible he had, because the doorknob remained perfectly still.

  He slowed down his breathing until he was barely breathing at all. Cole listened—really, really listened—and didn’t hear anything.

  Not a damn thing.

  “Jumpy, are we?” the Voice asked.

  Maybe a little.

  “Just a little?”

  Okay, he was definitely jumpy. And by a lot, too.

  Cole didn’t move from the wall for the next few minutes. If someone was on the other side of 509, maybe listening against it the way he was trying to eavesdrop on their presence, he wasn’t about to give himself away. Of course, if there was no one there, it meant he was standing out in the open, completely exposed, when he should be hurrying—