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

  And then there were the crazed people he had watched attack their loved ones and total strangers alike. Where were they? Surely some had to have survived yesterday’s madness.

  And yet, it was dead quiet up there.

  “Haha. ‘Dead,’” the Voice said.

  Yeah, that was probably the wrong choice of words.

  “It’s like they were possessed by demons,” Zoe had said last night.

  Cole couldn’t disagree. He had seen a lot of things in his life, but yesterday—the sight of schoolboys swarming over the truck driver who weighed more than all of them combined, being just one—was something new.

  “…Like they were possessed by demons…”

  Cole wasn’t a religious man; he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone to church or prayed or picked up the Bible, much less read one. Right now, he wondered what the Old Testament had to say about what had happened on the streets not more than twenty-four hours earlier.

  “Maybe something about the end of days,” the Voice said.

  Maybe.

  “Or the apocalypse. That’s popular, too.”

  Let’s not go there.

  “Just saying.”

  Stop saying.

  “Did you find anything?” Zoe asked when he sat back down at his spot next to her and Ashley.

  “Just beer and liquor,” Cole said.

  “I could use some of those.”

  “Beer or liquor?”

  “Either/or.”

  He smiled. “Maybe in”—he glanced down at his watch—“thirty more minutes. If we don’t find anything up there, we’ll come back down and have a toast.”

  “What do you expect to find up there?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the problem.”

  He took out his phone and stared at the backlit display. There was no reception, just as there hadn’t been when he looked at it immediately after waking up. He checked his voice mail anyway but couldn’t get a connection. He did, though, find an old recording of Emily, left for him yesterday morning when he was in a meeting with George and the others.

  Cole put the phone to his ear and played the message. He’d already heard it, but he just wanted to hear her voice again.

  “I know you’re busy right now, saying good-byes and probably drinking a little too much celebratory, ahem, juice, but I just wanted you to know that I miss you. I’m thinking about you. And I’m grateful for what you’re doing for me. For us. The three of us. I love you, sweetheart. Come home soon.”

  He put the phone away and smiled at the darkness, glad that Zoe or Ashley couldn’t see him in the semidarkness of the room, because he imagined he must look like an idiot right now, smiling at nothing.

  “Do you think some of them are still out there?” Zoe finally asked.

  Them? he thought.

  Then, quickly: Ah. Them.

  The crazies. She was talking about the crazies.

  “Is that what we’re calling them?” the Voice asked.

  What do you want to call them?

  “I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”

  Crazies sounds about right.

  “Let’s go with that, then.”

  “I don’t know,” he said out loud.

  “What if it’s happening everywhere?” Zoe asked. “What if it’s all over the city? The state? The country? You think it could be happening all over the country? I heard news reports about killings in New York earlier yesterday. You think that had something to do with it?”

  Donnie had said the same thing to him, before Cole napped and woke up to a nightmare:

  “People going a little crazy. Some guy drove his truck into a mall in the morning and killed a bunch of people. Then some young kids beating people up in Central Park. All kinds of crazy shit… Must be something in the water out there, you think?”

  Must be something in the water, he thought now. Or the air. Or the food. Or a hundred other possibilities.

  I don’t know what’s happening, and that’s what scares me. What terrifies me.

  “Cole?” Zoe was saying.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Say it one more time, then maybe she’ll get the hint that you don’t know squat,” the Voice said.

  Cole didn’t say it one more time. He knew Zoe was just asking questions because, like him, she was scared about the uncertainty, the not knowing. What was happening up there? What had happened as they slept?

  He looked down at his watch again. Twenty-five more minutes till ten.

  Cole leaned back against the wall and let his mind drift beyond the basement and across the city, all the way to Bear Lake.

  And to Emily.

  His mind always went to Emily.

  Chapter 7

  The first time he killed a man, Cole was 18. It wasn’t an accident, but something he’d set out to do. He was a soldier, and so was the dead man. They wore different uniforms and fought for different causes but found themselves in the same place, at the same time.

  At least, that’s what Cole remembered. He couldn’t recall what had brought them there, really. For himself, or the man he’d killed. But he knew there was a reason they were armed and looking to take each other’s lives that day.

  The killing came swiftly and without thought. He saw a target and he squeezed the trigger, just like he’d been taught. Just like he’d done countless times on the range. He hadn’t even thought about it. It was less instinct and more muscle memory.

  See target. Pull trigger.

  Bang! and the man was dead.

  Or, if he was being pedantic about it, it was more of a pop!, because an M4 carbine popped more than it banged. The shot echoed for what seemed like an eternity until finally, finally fading into the wide-open desert landscape.

  The guy fell dead.

  Or, Cole assumed, he fell dead. He’d only spotted the man’s head poking up from the top of the sand berm when he fired. He initially only saw rags, then dark black hair splaying underneath them, as the guy appeared in the ACOG. Two slits for two dark eyes followed. There was at least a good hundred meters between them, but Cole’s first shot had been true.

  Cole saw a puff of red mist just before the man’s head snapped back, then disappeared out from view.

  And just like that, he’d killed his first man.

  Not that the Army ever confirmed it, but Cole knew what he’d done. The odd part about it was, he didn’t feel much of anything afterward. There was, though, a sense of confusion. An almost ethereal feeling of “That’s it?”

  “What’d you shoot at?” his running buddy, Gaines, asked from nearby. Gaines was flat on his back, eating a homemade granola bar that he was sent in a care package about once a week, every week for the last two months since they had been in country. Cole rarely saw the man without a granola bar in his hands.

  “Some guy,” Cole said, scanning the top of the berm for more targets. He didn’t see shit.

  “You get ’em?”

  “I dunno,” Cole said, even though he was pretty sure he had got ’em. But he couldn’t see a body, and he didn’t want to be caught claiming something that turned out not to be true. Besides, he just didn’t…feel anything.

  Why didn’t he feel anything?

  “Don’t shoot if you don’t see the whites of their eyes,” the LT said from somewhere behind Cole.

  “Yes, sir,” Cole said.

  “Wasting bullets,” Gaines said, chunks of granola falling out of his mouth. He scrambled to catch them, then popped the pieces back in. “Your momma never told you not to waste things like mine did?”

  “Nope.”

  “She should have.”

  “Yeah, well, she should have said and done a lot of things.”

  “You don’t know how long we’ll be out here. Gotta save every bullet. That’s in the manual.”

  “What manual?”

  “Some manual, somewhere.”

  “Show me the manual.”

  “When we get back to the base.”
Then, without missing a beat, “We gonna spend the night out here, LT?”

  “You’ll know when I know,” the lieutenant said.

  “It’s getting boring out here is all, sir. The only one shooting at ghosts is Ristler here.”

  “Don’t shoot if you don’t see the whites of their eyes, Ristler,” the LT said.

  “Yes, sir,” Cole said.

  He re-scanned the area where he’d spotted the rags earlier, but no one else popped up into his scope. After a while, Cole got bored and pulled his M4 back and leaned against the sand, blinking up at the hot sun. The body armor—all 16-ish pounds of it—was a pain in the ass to hump around in, but it wasn’t like the alternative was better.

  “Try this, it’s awesome,” Gaines said, holding out one of his granola bars.

  Cole took it and chewed on it. It wasn’t bad, but he was mostly thinking about the black of the eyes belonging to the man he’d shot and the puff of red mist that had appeared in his scope before the head snapped back and disappeared.

  “You definitely got that fucker,” a voice said.

  “What?” Cole said, glancing over at Gaines.

  “Huh?” Gaines said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That I got him.”

  “Got who?”

  “The guy,” Cole said, nodding over the berm behind them.

  The nineteen-year-old from Mobile, Alabama, squinted back at Cole from underneath his slightly canted helmet. “What the fuck you talking about?”

  “You said something.”

  “What? What did I say?”

  “I thought you said something.”

  Gaines shook his head. “I didn’t say shit, man.”

  “Oh,” Cole said, and went back to crunching on the granola.

  “You getting heatstroke or something?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You better be sure, ’cause it’s hot as fuck out here, and I have a bad feeling we’re gonna be out here for a while.”

  “It’s the desert. It’s supposed to be hot.”

  “Yeah, but this hot? Fuck,” Gaines said as he swiped at sweat dripping down his forehead.

  Cole kept quiet. He’d been pretty sure Gaines had said something, but if he had, why would the self-proclaimed “Roll Tide Hick” deny it?

  It was only later that night that Cole realized it wasn’t Gaines. Years later, he would come to accept that the day he killed his first man was the same day that the Voice first spoke to him.

  And it hadn’t shut up since.

  The door didn’t open easily because there was something on the other side—either something heavy or a lot of somethings heavy—but Cole kept pushing until it finally budged. He was covered in sweat and losing his footing when he finally managed to crack the metal door open just enough for a stream of sunlight to flood inside the basement landing.

  Behind him, Zoe flinched at the sudden brightness and lifted her hand to shield her eyes. “What’s that smell?”

  “Gasoline,” Cole said.

  “Why is there gasoline inside the bar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The opening was barely a few inches wide but plenty to glimpse the mostly intact interior of Billy’s Pub. The only change was a big hole in the ceiling that hadn’t been there the last time Cole had run through the place. It was a gaping crater, the result of something big having crashed through the roof.

  That “something,” he discovered, was an overturned Ford F-150 squatting in the middle of the room, on its roof. Gasoline dripped from the open gas tank, joining the already-large pool underneath the vehicle.

  “Is that…?” Zoe said.

  “That’s a truck,” Cole said.

  “How’d it get here?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe the blast from the plane crash.”

  Zoe took the final step up the stairs and leaned toward the opening. After a while, she shook her head and pulled back slightly. “I don’t hear anything. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “So what now?”

  Cole took out the sawed-off shotgun from his front waistband. “Just in case.”

  She looked at the weapon, then at him. “I did tell you there weren’t any bullets in there, right?”

  “Shells.”

  “Huh?”

  “Shotguns have shells, not bullets.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  He started to explain but shook his head instead. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, you and I know the shotgun isn’t loaded, but whoever we meet out there won’t.”

  “What if there are cops out there? Aren’t you afraid they might shoot you?”

  He hadn’t thought of that.

  “Suicide by cop,” the Voice said. “Or should I say, accidental suicide by cop. Now wouldn’t that be an ironic way to go?”

  More like a tragic way to go.

  “Tragedy, irony. Same difference.”

  It’s not.

  “Whatever.”

  Cole grunted to himself. It’d been a while since he had gotten into a pointless argument with himself, and he didn’t miss it one bit.

  “Did you say something?” Zoe asked.

  “Just clearing my throat,” Cole said. He put the shotgun down on the floor. “But you’re right. Wouldn’t want to get shot for nothing. Ready?”

  “Almost.” She looked down the stairs. “Ashley, sweetheart.”

  The girl appeared at the foot of the stairs in the thin sliver of morning sunlight. Cole hadn’t realized it before, but she was dressed in a schoolgirl’s uniform, which immediately made him flash back to those schoolboys climbing over the huge truck driver in the streets yesterday.

  “Come on,” Zoe said, and Ashley jogged up the stairs toward them.

  “How old is she?” Cole asked.

  “Eight.”

  “I’m eight,” Ashley repeated.

  “So I heard,” Cole said. He looked at the mom for a second, then the child.

  “What’s wrong?” Zoe asked.

  “This is your last chance. You sure you wouldn’t rather stay here instead of going out there with me?”

  “You think we should?”

  “I think it’s the safer option.”

  “But you’re not staying down here with us.”

  “I can’t. My life is out there.”

  “Bear Lake.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where your wife is.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want us to go with you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not saying that at all.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, before you risk your life and your daughter’s out there with me, you need to seriously consider all the dangers that might be waiting for you.”

  “What if I keep Ashley down here, and no help comes?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “So we’d be left alone, with no food or water.”

  “There may be food and water in the bar. I can search for you—we can search together—before I go.”

  “Or maybe there’s nothing to find, and we’ll end up starving in a few days when no help comes.”

  Cole sighed. “That’s a possibility, too. The other possibility is that a battalion of national guardsmen might show up an hour after I leave. Or ten minutes later.”

  “Or never,” Zoe said.

  He nodded. “Or never. But out there…”

  “It’s risky.”

  “It’s very risky.”

  “I think it’d be riskier if we stayed down here.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Like you said, Cole: We don’t know anything, do we?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “So it’s settled.”

  He sighed. “I guess so.” Then, “Stay close. Don’t stray. That g
oes for the both of you.”

  “Okay,” Zoe said.

  “Okay,” Ashley said with a nod.

  “I mean it,” Cole said, putting enough into his voice to let them know that he did mean it, and not caring if it scared them. “If you stray, and I have to go look for you…” He shook his head. “I won’t go looking for you. I have a mission. Get home. That’s it. That’s the only thing on my mind right now.”

  “We understand,” Zoe said. She sounded almost annoyed with him. Maybe she didn’t like being treated like a child. Or, in this case, like her eight-year-old daughter.

  Cole would have apologized if he thought he was being unnecessarily harsh, but he didn’t think he was. He needed them to understand what would happen, because he wasn’t going to go back on his word.

  Not with Emily out there, alone, waiting.

  “You should have gone into the basement alone,” the Voice said.

  But I didn’t.

  “You should have.”

  But I didn’t, so now they’re my responsibility.

  That was partially true.

  “Which part?” the Voice asked.

  I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

  He said out loud, “I just need you to know where I stand.”

  “You did that. And we both understand.” Zoe looked down at her daughter. “Tell him, sweetheart.”

  The girl nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t stray,” Cole said again, this time staring at the kid.

  Ashley, for some reason, saluted him back.

  Chapter 8

  Cole pulled his dress shirt up and over his mouth before he took the first couple of steps out of the basement. He hadn’t been able to push the whole thing open, just enough to squeeze through. Behind him, Zoe and her daughter followed, Zoe clutching tightly to the girl. It was probably just a bit too tight, but Ashley either didn’t feel it or would rather have it than not.

  The reason why it had been so difficult to open the door fully was the pieces of the ceiling that had fallen down, creating a pile of junk on the floor, with chunks of the bar counter that had been split in half by the wayward truck making the bulk of it. Broken glass crunched under Cole’s loafers, and he was very mindful that the Italian leather shoes weren’t going to protect him very much if he happened to step on a large piece of sharp glass or metal sticking out of the ground. Which, in this case, could be every step he took, in every direction, because the pub was littered with all manner of dangerous items at the moment.