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

  Cole glanced back as Zoe pulled Ashley protectively closer to her. Cole was a little afraid that if she held the girl any tighter, she might smother her.

  “Look down, okay?” Zoe said. “Look down at the ground, sweetheart.”

  Ashley obeyed, but Cole could see that she had already seen too much. It was in the kid’s face, in her eyes.

  Zoe looked up at Cole. “Should we be looking for a car? Bear Lake isn’t exactly within walking distance. And it’d be safer to travel by car, don’t you think?”

  They had been walking for a while now and department storefronts had given way to mostly apartment buildings and small mom and pop shops. It hadn’t occurred to Cole that they should be looking for a ride. Why hadn’t he thought of it? It was the obvious thing to do.

  “Maybe she’s not so useless after all,” the Voice said.

  Maybe not.

  “Let’s look for a car,” he said out loud.

  He began doing just that, heading straight for the nearest vehicle—a white Camry squatting between two lanes. The driver-side door was open, but there were no signs of the driver, dead or alive. There was also no blood around the vehicle, so it made for a perfect first choice.

  Unfortunately, the key was gone when Cole leaned through the open door.

  “Anything?” Zoe asked.

  He pulled his head out and shook it before moving to the next vehicle. The problem wasn’t the available options; the problem was the usable available options.

  “It’s not too late to go back to the bar,” Cole said.

  Zoe glanced behind her, back down the street. She turned back to him and shook her head. “Yes, it is. Besides, would you walk us back there?”

  “I can’t afford to.”

  “Exactly. So it’s too late now.”

  Cole nodded. He had to admit, Zoe was a capable woman. She was a mother with an eight-year-old child and had probably never seen a man being killed before in her life. And she’d seen exactly that—and God knows however many more gruesome things yesterday—and here she was…

  What, exactly?

  “Capable is a good word,” the Voice said. “The lady’s capable.”

  Cole had seen grown men trained to kill who broke down in the middle of a firefight. He’d seen 250-pound meatheads crying for their momma when they saw their friends get torn to pieces in front of them by an IED.

  But here was thirty-something Zoe, looking, acting, and talking very much like a rock for the sake of her daughter. The only other woman who had managed to impress Cole as much as Zoe was Emily. His Emily.

  “What’s wrong?” Zoe was asking him.

  Cole shook his head. “Nothing. Why?”

  “You were staring at me.”

  “Caught!” the Voice laughed.

  “Just trying to decide what the chances of us finding keys in a car are,” Cole said.

  “It can’t be that bad,” Zoe said. “People were just abandoning their vehicles yesterday. One of them has to have keys.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Cole went on ahead of them and peeked into a red Toyota SUV, then investigated a blue Ford crumpled up against a telephone pole. He bypassed a fallen Honda CBR motorcycle and went around a white van with JOE’S PLUMBING written on the side, complete with a cartoon of a balding man holding up a plunger while smiling broadly: Joe Does It Right was written in cursive letters underneath the caricature.

  A few feet from the plumber’s van, Cole found a black and white Mini Cooper with the keys sitting on the bloody driver’s seat. The blood wasn’t the problem, because he could always clean the keys and use something to put between him and the wetness, but the small two-door was wedged between a semi and a Jeep. He could have put the Jeep in neutral and pushed it out of the way…if it wasn’t overturned on its roof. That was going to be a problem.

  “Maybe we should spread out to cover more ground?” Zoe said.

  He shook his head. “No. Stay close.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Don’t stray.”

  She nodded, looking almost relieved. Maybe she was afraid he’d say Yes, in which case he wondered why she’d made the suggestion in the first place. Even though, when he thought about it, it was the smarter thing to do. If they spread out, they could definitely cover more ground and maybe finally find a car with the keys still in the ignition and nothing blocking—

  Clink!

  Something bounced off the pavement in front of him. Cole’s eyes snapped, following that “something.”

  A small round brass coin, about the size of a penny, but slightly smaller and not like any penny he’d seen. It ricocheted off the ground and flipped back into the air before clinking! a second time against the street.

  “Did you hear that?” Zoe asked.

  Cole didn’t answer. Instead, he turned left, in the direction where the penny (some kind of collectible coin?) had come from.

  What the hell?

  Someone was waving at him from a window across the street. High up—the fifth floor—of an apartment building. Black, young, morning sunlight glinting off the lens of his wire-rimmed glasses. He was moving his arms frantically, trying to get Cole’s attention.

  Then, when the kid saw that Cole had seen him, he began pointing frantically up the street.

  Cole turned to follow his gesture.

  Cars. He saw a lot of cars. There were bodies in some of them, but most were empty.

  What was the kid pointing at?

  He looked back at the teenager.

  The kid was still pointing, practically jumping up and down now, but not quite. For some reason he seemed to be hunched down low behind the open window frame, almost as if he was kneeling on the other side. They were close enough—just across the street—that Cole would have heard the kid if he shouted something. Except he wasn’t, almost as if he didn’t want to be noticed.

  “He’s scared,” the Voice said.

  Looks like it. But why?

  “Ask him.”

  Cole was about to do that when Zoe, standing next to him, beat him to it. “What’s he doing?”

  “Trying to get our attention,” Cole said.

  “Why?”

  The kid was still pointing down the street, but Cole didn’t see anything even when he looked a second time.

  There were cars, and bodies, and…what? What was he supposed to be seeing?

  “You see anything?” he asked Zoe.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Cole took a step toward the apartment. The building was ten floors high, the doors into the lobby closed. No signs, but red brick and mortar lined the front and probably the other three sides as well.

  “What?” Cole shouted up at the kid.

  Something that looked almost like annoyance flashed across the kid’s face.

  “What do you want?” Cole shouted.

  The kid finally stopped pointing and leaned even farther out the window. “Get out of the street! Get out of the street, you idiot!”

  “Idiot?” the Voice said. “Did he just call you an idiot?”

  Yeah, I think he did.

  “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Cole took another step toward the apartment building and was about to shout back at the kid when he felt Zoe’s hand grabbing his arm and tugged on it anxiously.

  “Cole,” she said, her voice rising slightly.

  He glanced back at her. She was looking down the street, in the same direction the kid in the window had been pointing earlier. It took him a few seconds to notice what had caught her attention.

  It was a man standing on the other side of a white Chevy truck sandwiched between two other vehicles, less than twenty meters from them. He was wearing white overalls with suspenders, his clothes splashed with gaudy red stripes—

  No, not stripes. Blood. The red patterns on the man’s outfit was blood.

  Cole had no idea how the man had sneaked up on them. On him. Jesus Christ. Had the guy been tiptoeing
around the abandoned vehicles all this time, only revealing himself now when he’d been spotted by Zoe?

  No, not Zoe.

  The kid. The kid in the window had seen the man first and tried to warn them.

  Cole stared at the man, but it wasn’t the man’s bloodstained clothes that caught and held his attention. It was the man’s eyes. They were bloodred.

  …bloodred…

  “His eyes,” Zoe said breathlessly. “Do you see his eyes?”

  “Yes,” Cole said.

  “What should we do?”

  “Run!” the kid in the window shouted. “Run, you idiot! Run!”

  As if on cue, the man with bloodshot eyes sprang into action, circling around the hood of the Chevy and running toward them. His arms swung wildly as he ran, and Cole noticed, with what could only be morbid fascination, that the man was missing almost his entire left arm at the elbow. The stump had since been cauterized and was no longer bleeding. There was nothing wrong with his right hand, though, as it gripped a bloodied wrench that gleamed under the bright morning sun.

  “Kid’s got the right idea!” the Voice said. “Time to run!”

  Cole agreed and shouted, “Run!”

  “Where?” Zoe shouted.

  “Run! Just run!”

  Chapter 10

  In his mind, Cole had meant to direct Zoe toward the apartment building where the black kid was staying, but when he opened his mouth, the only words that came rushing out were, “Run!” Then, later, “Run! Just run!”

  “Run? Run where?” the Voice asked. “Run back? Run forward? Run side to side?”

  Thankfully, Zoe was smarter than Cole or the Voice, and knew exactly where to go. She was already halfway across the street and to the apartment building, Ashley clutched tightly against her chest. Cole wasn’t sure how Zoe was lifting Ashley and running as fast as she was. Even he would have problems doing both those things at the same time—at least, as well as she seemed to be doing it. Then again, he wasn’t a mom, and with as much adrenaline pumping through his bloodstream at the moment, it probably wasn’t even close to what Zoe was feeling.

  “Damn. Look at that woman run!” the Voice said.

  Yeah, she was something, all right.

  “Shouldn’t you be running, too?”

  Right. He was standing there like an idiot, waiting to be bashed in the head with the wrench that was, no doubt, already covered in other people’s blood from yesterday.

  As she ran, her daughter clutched tightly to her chest, Zoe glanced back at him, her eyes widening in a Well? Aren’t you coming, too? question.

  “Go!” Cole shouted. “Don’t look back! Just go go go!”

  Zoe may or may not have nodded back. He couldn’t be sure. But she turned around and went, went, went.

  The Voice laughed. “Now it’s your turn, chum!”

  Cole took off, but he hadn’t taken more than a few steps before he knew he wouldn’t make it to the apartment building in time. And Zoe and her daughter might not, either, because the one-armed crazy in overalls had gotten a hell of a jump on both of them. In fact, the crazy was already angling right, on an intercept course toward mother and daughter.

  They won’t make it…

  “Not your problem!” the Voice said.

  They are.

  “Since when?”

  Since now!

  The crazy might have been huge, but he had long legs and was making up the twenty meters or so between them in seconds. Even that bloodied stump where his left arm used to be didn’t seem to be doing a whole lot to slow him down. Cole couldn’t tell if the man was breathing hard at all as his legs pistoned and the wrench rose and fell, the sun glinting off the metal parts that wasn’t covered in dry blood, of which there wasn’t very much.

  Christ. How many’s he killed with that thing already?

  “Who cares? You want to be next?” the Voice asked.

  Cole didn’t answer, but he couldn’t help but wonder how many heads the one-armed crazy had already bashed in with that wrench since yesterday. God only knew what the maniac had been doing all day while waiting for an idiot (“Like you?” the Voice asked.) to just waltz willy-nilly down the street and become prey.

  “Should have been more careful,” the Voice said.

  He should have done a lot of things.

  “Exactly right. It’s not too late to change that.”

  Yes, it was.

  “Is it?”

  Yes.

  The Voice sighed. “You’re trying to get yourself killed, aren’t you?”

  Cole didn’t answer the Voice. Instead, he shouted, “Hey, motherfucker!”

  The crazy was halfway to Zoe—he would have reached her well before he got to Cole—when he stopped and turned around, and grotesquely wide, bleeding eyes zeroed in on Cole.

  “Yeah, you, asshole!” Cole shouted. “Fuck you!”

  The man’s cheeks seemed to flare, and blood—or some other dark, reddish liquid—flitted from both nostrils as he pivoted away from Zoe and her daughter, and ran at Cole.

  “Oh, now you’ve done it,” the Voice said. “So what now, smart guy?”

  The crazy maneuvered around the abandoned vehicles with amazing grace and speed, and for a moment—just a moment—Cole thought, Maybe drawing his attention wasn’t such a good idea after all.

  Zoe had hopped onto the sidewalk, and there were only ten more feet left between her and the twin doors that would lead into the apartment building, when she glanced back at him, perhaps responding to the sound of his voice.

  “Keep moving!” Cole shouted at her. “Get inside!”

  This time, he was certain she nodded, before turning around and reaching for the doors and pulling one of them open—for a split second, Cole was afraid the doors would be locked, but thank God they weren’t.

  And then the one-armed crazy was almost on top of him, the rancid warmth of the man’s haggard breath flooding against Cole’s face even before the man reached him.

  Cole swung with the bat.

  Ping! as the aluminum weapon landed solidly with the side of the charging man’s head. The crazy was six-four, three inches taller than Cole, so Cole didn’t exactly have to tiptoe to land the blow. Even so, he wasn’t prepared for the aftershock of the impact, and both his arms were still trembling as he watched the crazy (the name Joe was stenciled across his overall’s oval-shaped name tag) snap backward and into the partially-open front passenger side door of a black Audi.

  The one-armed man crumped to the floor, the wrench flying out of his remaining hand. Blood sprayed the sedan, but if Cole (was hoping) thought that Joe would stay down, he was sadly disappointed. The man sprang right back up, letting out a loud growl even as blood flew from both eyes.

  “I think he’s mad now,” the Voice said. “You just made him mad!”

  Fuck him, Cole thought as he stepped up and cracked the bat over Joe’s head a second time.

  The first blow had cut open the man’s temple, leaving a big, nasty gash behind. The second one did the same to Joe’s forehead, and Joe went down again.

  Cole waited for the man to get right back up like last time, but he didn’t. Instead, Joe lay in a crumpled heap, half of his head folded inward, and the skull cracked. Blood—and possibly chunks of brain—oozed out of the crater in both the side and front of his head.

  “Yeah, I think you got him,” the Voice said. “But better make sure.”

  Cole stepped closer and smashed the bat into the center of Joe’s head, cratering the skull even further. Blood, and other things from inside Joe’s head, splattered Cole’s pants legs.

  But because Cole had to be sure, he swung again.

  “Again!” the Voice shouted.

  Ping! as the bat struck the pavement.

  “Again!”

  Ping!

  “One more time!”

  Ping!

  Then, from the other side of the globe, “Cole!”

  Zoe’s voice, cutting through the fog.

 
; What just happened?

  He staggered away from Joe’s unmoving body. The bat felt suddenly heavy in his hands even though it shouldn’t have been. He’d held and used weapons that were much heavier than this one. So why did it feel so heavy? Why did it seem to take all of his strength to keep it raised?

  “Welcome back,” the Voice said, just before it started laughing. “Welcome back to the shit, my friend.”

  No…

  “Don’t fight it.”

  No…

  “Don’t fight it!”

  No!

  “Cole!”

  Again, Zoe’s voice, slicing through the wild wind rushing through his head and carrying on all the way down to the tips of his toes.

  He looked over at Zoe, already inside the apartment building. She was holding one of the double doors open for him.

  “Cole, come on!” she shouted.

  He hesitated. He didn’t know why, but he did.

  Cole glanced back down at Joe the plumber. Or what was left of Joe. There wasn’t very much still there from the shoulders up. Cole didn’t remember striking the head that many times in order to reduce it to…that.

  Did he actually do that? Did he do that?

  “Yes, you did, because you had to,” the Voice said.

  Did he?

  “Yeah, you did.”

  But the guy was already down…

  “You had to be sure.”

  Was that true?

  “Trust me. It was necessary.”

  Yes. It was necessary…

  “Now you’re getting it. So snap out of it.”

  Yes…

  “And get your shit back in the game!”

  Cole did, and flicked blood and brains and whatever else was clinging to the aluminum bat off it before he stepped away from Joe’s unmoving body. Joe may have been big and strong and crazed, but he wasn’t going to get back up. He was dead. Deader than a doorknob, as the Voice was fond of—

  “Cole!”

  He looked up and across the street at Zoe. She was staring back at him.

  “Behind you!” she shouted.

  Cole turned around.

  “Time to go!” the Voice half-shouted and half-laughed as one, two—no, three figures appeared out of nowhere and made a beeline for him. And only him, because he was the only idiot standing out in the street—in the open.