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

  He looked back at the women. “Watch your step.”

  Zoe nodded, and so did Ashley. Cole was struck by the resemblance—the blonde hair, facial features, green eyes. Mother and daughter were practically identical.

  “Stay close,” Cole said.

  “Understood,” Zoe said.

  He turned and skirted around the badly-crumpled front grill of the Ford and squeezed through the remainder of the bar counter. Cole kept expecting to see bodies, but there were none inside the place, which meant no one had made it in during all the chaos of yesterday. A part of Cole dreaded to see what was out there. But dread or not, he had no choice because Emily was also out there. And right now, getting to her was all that mattered.

  “Ouch,” Ashley said from behind him.

  Cole looked back as the girl rubbed at her side, having accidentally bumped into a remaining blunt edge of the thick wooden bar.

  “Stay alert, honey,” Zoe said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the girl said.

  “Hurt?”

  “A little bit. But I’ll be fine.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  Cole scanned the blown-out windows in front of them. There wasn’t much glass left, but a few scattered remains managed to hang onto their frames. The lack of obstruction allowed Cole to look out at what awaited them outside.

  And it was empty.

  And quiet.

  Too empty and too quiet.

  Where the hell is everyone? he thought, when Zoe, echoing his thoughts, said, “Where is everyone? Where did they all go?”

  “I don’t know,” Cole said. He looked back at mother and daughter again. “Remember, stay close.”

  “We will,” Zoe said.

  “Yes, sir,” Ashley said. This time, the girl didn’t salute him.

  They walked the rest of the way to the front door, going around as much of the dangerous—and sharp—debris as they could. It didn’t take long—the bar wasn’t that big—but they were probably being more cautious than necessary.

  Cole didn’t mind the slow pace. It allowed him to listen to what was going on out there (Nothing. That was what was going on out there. A big, fat, eerie nothing.) and feel the calm—too calm—air around him.

  Where were all the screams? The noise of chaos? The reminder that yesterday had ushered forth something that Cole knew had drastically changed the way human beings lived on this planet?

  But there was none of that.

  And that absence, more than anything, gnawed at his gut.

  Cole didn’t have to push open the pub’s front door. It was hanging off its hinges, nearly knocked free by one of the wrought iron tables that were stationed outside, the legs bent at odd angles as it stuck half-in and half-out of the place. There were red splashes along the white paint, and Cole didn’t have to wonder what they were.

  He stepped out of Billy’s Pub and outside.

  “Oh, God,” Zoe said from behind him. Then, “Look down at the ground, sweetheart. Look down at the ground.”

  Zoe was talking to Ashley, because she didn’t want her daughter to see what was waiting for them.

  Bodies.

  Dead bodies.

  A lot of them.

  He could smell them even before he saw them. It was the same bloody stench that had invaded the pub through the blown-out windows and partially-open door, coming from the sidewalks outside, and the entire block as far as he knew. Cars littered the streets, more than a few of them resting on their sides or roofs, similar to the Ford squatting in Billy’s place behind him. Others were partially buried in buildings and storefronts, but the vast majority had simply been abandoned by their owners.

  The shredded fabric of a familiar-looking apron flapped in the breeze, having somehow gotten hung up on one of the many downed power poles. For every tree, lamppost, and streetlight that had been left standing, another one was lying across the sidewalk or bent at odd angles along the street. Downed power lines crisscrossed from poles and draped over buildings, but Cole didn’t see anything that looked like live wires that could kill him.

  Sunlight glinted off a carpet of glass up and down the block, and when he glanced right, he could still see smoke drifting lazily into the air in the distance. That would have been where the 747 passenger plane he’d witnessed falling out of the sky had, eventually, touched down. How many souls were inside when that happened? And how many of them were trying to kill the other passengers?

  “Go left, young man,” the Voice said.

  No shit, Captain Obvious.

  “Just a suggestion. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

  Shut up.

  “Is that what you want?”

  Yes.

  “I don’t believe you. You need me.”

  Cole was reminded of old World War II footages of European cities in the aftermath of an aerial Allied bombardment. But where those footages were kind enough to edit out the bodies and only showcase the structural destructions, Cole couldn’t avoid that bloody reality this morning.

  The dead were everywhere. Simply everywhere. Men, women, and children. Blood covered the streets and sidewalks and cars. Bodies that were still intact and others that didn’t look like bodies anymore.

  “Mommy,” Ashley said, her voice barely audible.

  “Look down, sweetheart,” Zoe said. “Look down, okay? Don’t look up until Mommy tells you to.”

  Cole glanced back and saw that Zoe had stepped in front of Ashley to keep the girl from sneaking a look at their surroundings. There was a body in front of them, lying half-on and half-off the curb. Cole only knew it was the body of a dead woman because of the torso, arms, and legs; the head was gone.

  “Don’t look,” Zoe said. “Don’t look, sweetheart.”

  Ashley put her head against her mother’s chest as Zoe wrapped her arms around her smaller, frail body.

  “Stay here,” Cole said.

  Zoe looked back at him, her eyes suddenly alarmed.

  “I need to find a weapon,” Cole said.

  She nodded, looking very much relieved.

  Cole pulled down the shirt he’d been using to cover his mouth and nostrils in order to suck in some air. He flinched at the sudden flood of stench. He had barely eaten anything yesterday—if anything, he’d mostly drank too much at the company good-bye party—and his stomach rumbled, threatening to puke up what little food he had managed to put down.

  “Don’t throw up in front of the women,” the Voice said, laughing.

  Cole didn’t have to go far before he spotted an aluminum baseball bat buried in the driver-side window of an overturned Chevy truck nearby. He pulled it out, avoiding the dry blood that caked the top half. The bat felt good in his hands, and he took a few practice swings, liking the almost singing sound it made as it cut through air. It wasn’t a sword or a knife, or best-case scenario, a gun, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It looked, he thought, very much like the same bat he’d seen Rob, the bartender, using yesterday.

  Cole glanced around, but there were no signs of the bat’s previous owner. There were also no hints of anyone else on the streets except him and the two women standing on the sidewalk behind him. At least, there was no one he could see.

  “It’s quiet. Too quiet,” the Voice said.

  Cole scanned the windows along the apartments across the street. Then the overturned and parked cars and the alleyways squeezed between buildings. It was a bright enough morning that he wasn’t scared of things jumping out of shadows at him, but there were still plenty of dark spots around him to be wary of.

  Too many. Way, way too many.

  “Stop lollygagging and get moving,” the Voice said. “Emily’s not going to come to you, you know.”

  The Voice had a point.

  “Of course I do. Now git!”

  He got, turning around, and walking back to the women.

  Zoe and her daughter had obeyed his instructions and hadn’t moved from the pub at all. Or from the headless body lingering half-on and half-off the
curb nearby. Mother and daughter were still holding hands, and Cole was pretty certain there weren’t a whole lot of things in this world that were going to be able to pry Zoe’s hands off Ashley’s. For a kid that had seen people bash each other’s heads in, the eight-year-old looked mostly fine. Or maybe that was just a coping mechanism. Having her mother nearby probably helped.

  As he walked back to them, Cole took out his cell phone and turned it on. He waited anxiously for the device to power up, and when it finally did, he frowned at the empty bars.

  What had he expected? Maybe a miracle.

  “Miracles don’t happen to you, chum,” the Voice said.

  Cole ignored the Voice and tried calling anyway.

  “Really?” the Voice asked.

  When he couldn’t get anything that resembled a signal, Cole tried texting.

  “Seriously?” the Voice said.

  Shut the hell up, Cole thought as he put the phone away.

  “Anything?” Zoe asked when he finally reached them.

  “Do you have your phone?” he asked.

  “It was in my purse, but I left it back in my car. Did your phone work?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Cell towers are down. Or something else happened.” He sighed. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I don’t know anything.”

  Ashley peered around her mother’s waist to look at him. The kid didn’t exactly look traumatized, but Cole had a feeling she wasn’t going to forget the last 24 hours for the rest of her life.

  “What now?” Zoe was asking him.

  “I’m going to Bear Lake,” Cole said. “You said you knew where that is?”

  She nodded. “My boss used to have a lakeside house up there. Is that where we’re going?”

  “‘We?’”

  Zoe looked down at her daughter, then back up at him. “We’re going wherever you’re going. If that’s okay with you.”

  “That’s a firm ‘No’,” the Voice said.

  But Cole didn’t say No.

  “Tell her ‘No’,” the Voice said.

  Cole didn’t.

  “Tell her.”

  I can’t.

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  I can’t.

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  “Are you sure?” Cole asked the women.

  “Yes,” Zoe said. “Something happened yesterday. Something that changed everything. In the city, maybe the state—maybe the country. All I know is that my daughter and I are safe with you.”

  “You need to be sure about that.”

  “I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life.”

  Cole nodded. “All right. Stay close.”

  “Goddammit,” the Voice said. “You’re going to die, you know that? And Emily’s going to be left alone. Is that what you want?”

  No.

  “Then why are you dragging a mother and her daughter with you?”

  I can’t leave them behind.

  “You can do anything you want, but you’re choosing not to.”

  Cole didn’t answer the Voice.

  He said instead, “Let’s go, and hope we run into someone who can tell us what’s been happening up here.”

  As they turned around, Zoe said, “Don’t look, sweetheart. Don’t look.”

  Ashley didn’t as she walked on the left side of her mother.

  Just to make sure the girl didn’t see the headless body as they passed it by, Cole slowed down until he was walking to Zoe’s right in order to block the girl’s view if she should attempt to sneak a peek. He never did find out if she tried to look or not.

  As they walked, Cole loosened, then took off the tie he’d been wearing all day yesterday and most of this morning. In all the chaos and running, he’d forgotten all about it. It’d been a part of his life for so long that keeping it on had just been a natural thing to do.

  He dropped the tie and let it flutter to the street behind him. It landed in a pool of blood and what used to be someone’s face. A man, this time. Cole glanced back and saw that the body was wearing an apron, and though it was mostly covered in dry blood, he could just barely make out the word ROB on a name tag.

  Chapter 9

  “It’s a butcher shop. Only gorier.”

  Cole couldn’t disagree with that assessment. It was frank and to the point, and truthful. Everything the Voice did very well.

  He’d been in war zones and seen cities that were turned into killing fields, but this…was something else. Maybe it was the fact it was all happening here, in his city, his country, and not some foreign soil where people spoke a different language that made all the difference. He thought he was prepared for the aftermath after witnessing the beginning of it yesterday, but he was wrong.

  This was bad.

  “That’s the understatement of the century right there, buddy,” the Voice said, before it started cackling.

  The street beyond Billy’s Pub got progressively bloodier, with more bodies strewn about. Not all the blood was dry, and some of the bodies looked fresh enough that they hadn’t begun to smell yet. That was a sign the killing hadn’t stopped after yesterday, but had continued into this morning.

  “Danger, Will Robinson, danger,” the Voice said.

  Tell me something I don’t already know.

  “You should have left the mother and daughter behind.”

  Except that.

  “You said—”

  Shut up.

  “What did I tell you about shooting the messenger?”

  Just shut up.

  Cole tightened his grip around the bat. The same alarm bells that had gone off inside his head when he first stepped foot outside the basement continued ringing, and he didn’t let his eyes linger at one spot for too long.

  A body here, another there.

  One underneath a car.

  Another covered underneath debris.

  Even more left to rot in the open morning sun.

  Too many. If he started counting them all, he would never stop.

  So he didn’t, and kept moving instead. That was the only thing left to do now—keep moving.

  Get to Bear Lake.

  Get to Emily.

  Get—

  “Should have left the mother and daughter behind,” the Voice said.

  Didn’t I tell you to shut up?

  “You know I’m right.”

  Cole didn’t answer.

  “You know I’m right,” the Voice insisted.

  Cole still didn’t answer.

  Instead, he focused on the lack of voices outside his head, or the sight of people other than him, Zoe, and Ashley. Someone. Anyone. There were also no car engines, sirens, or anything that told him he and the mother and daughter weren’t the only three human beings still alive in the city.

  Behind him, smoke continued to drift from the plane’s impact site, well up the block. That direction was a no-go. He didn’t want to see what the 747 had done to that particular stretch of the city. He imagined charred bodies and worse.

  “Worse than this?” the Voice asked.

  Yes.

  “Maybe…”

  He concentrated on what was in front of him instead.

  The bodies.

  And blood.

  …and more bodies..

  Jesus Christ, there were a lot of dead people.

  “Stay focused,” the Voice said. “This is going to get worse before it gets better. It’s not like this is our first rodeo.”

  Isn’t it?

  “Well…”

  That was a new one. Cole rarely heard the Voice get tripped up.

  He walked on ahead of the women, but kept his ears to the sounds of their footsteps behind him. Occasionally, he glanced back to make sure they were still back there and hadn’t strayed too far away. They hadn’t. They had actually gotten closer, with Zoe gripping Ashley’s wrist tighter, if that was even possible. The girl walked next to her mother
, doing her best not to look at their surroundings, but Cole caught her sneaking a peek once or twice. Probably more times that he couldn’t see. He didn’t blame the kid. It was impossible to not notice the devastation and bodies around them. Even if she somehow didn’t notice them, she wouldn’t have been able to escape the stench.

  He kept his eyes on the street around him but also on the skies. The very empty skies above them. There were no helicopters or airplanes or—

  A flock of birds flew by in a V-shape.

  Well, at least the birds were still out there. What else was still chugging along as if nothing had happened? And did he really want to find out?

  They passed a man in a black blazer and white dress shirt slumped behind the wheel of a parked Dodge, with something that might have been a metal rod sticking out of his temple.

  A woman with half of her head missing lay half-in and half-out of the broken window of a bookstore across from the Dodge.

  A pickup truck partially parked on the sidewalk. Its driver was missing, but he or she—or they—had left behind a lot of blood on the open driver-side door, that joined up with a big puddle on the ground. Bloody boot prints, belonging to more than one person, went in separate directions.

  After a while, Cole stopped focusing on the bodies. Instead, they passed by as a series of colorful blurs—the colors belonging to their clothes. He ignored how they died, their gender, and even their last positions. He was surprised how easily he had become desensitized to his bloody surroundings; a coping mechanism that had kicked in.

  “Dead is dead. Soldiers or civilians,” the Voice said. “You can’t do anything for them now. Survive. That’s all you can do. Survive, and get back to Emily.”

  Get back to Emily…

  “That’s right. Emily. Remember her?”

  I remember.

  “Good boy. That’s a good boy.”

  “Mommy,” Ashley said behind him, her voice turning squeaky again.

  “I know, sweetheart,” Zoe said.