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

  Crazies. All three of them.

  They were too far for Cole to see every single face, but it was in the way they moved—reckless and fast, the adrenaline pumping through their veins, helping one of them to leap over a parked car hood while another all but plowed over a garbage can on the sidewalk and never once slowed down for even a second.

  He didn’t know where they had been hiding all this time, but they were converging on him from different directions, almost as if they had all been waiting, separate from one another, to strike. And he, Zoe, and Ashley had just given them exactly what they’d been waiting for.

  The one that had jumped over the parked car had emerged out of an alleyway between a bakery and a bookstore, the folds of his shredded blazer flapping behind him. He looked like some kind of office drone, complete with white dress shirt, black slacks, and flailing tie.

  The second one had leapt through the broken windows of a McDonald’s, a knife clutched in his right hand. Behind him, back in the restaurant, Cole glimpsed bodies on the floor, some slumped over booths.

  The third was wearing a blood-splattered apron and was swinging a large meat cleaver wildly as he burst out of a parked van and made a straight line for Cole. He was the closest of the three by far, and as big and short as he looked, the man still maneuvered around the vehicles that separated him and Cole with amazing fluidity. Joe, the now-dead plumber, had possessed that kind of agility earlier, too.

  Their eyes—wide and beyond huge, the pupils clearly pulsating wildly even from a distance as blood flitted from the sockets—zeroed in on him.

  “Run, dude!”

  Cole turned, looking back at Zoe—then up the building to the fifth-floor window with the bespectacled black kid.

  “Don’t just stand there!” the kid shouted. “Get your ass moving, man! Get outta there!”

  “He’s got a point,” the Voice said.

  Yeah, he does, Cole thought, taking off for the apartment.

  He was almost on the sidewalk when he heard a loud, echoing clang! and glanced back.

  Two of the crazies had collided and crashed into a parked SUV. The one from the McDonald’s and the butcher. They were locked in combat, sunlight flashing wildly as their hands swung and their weapons cut away at each other’s flesh. Blood arced through the air, not that that did anything to stop either one from continuing to slash and strike at the other, neither one giving up.

  For a second—maybe two, or possibly three—Cole stood frozen and stared, trying to understand what was happening. These two had been waiting for him—or someone stupid like him—to walk into their sights, but they’d turned on each other instead.

  No, that wasn’t true at all. They weren’t turning on each other—they’d never been allies to begin with. They were just waiting for victims, whether it was him, Zoe, Ashley, or anyone else. Even each other.

  Crazies killing crazies…

  “Watch out, watch out!” the kid in the window was shouting.

  Cole glanced up at him, then followed where he was pointing—

  The third crazy—the office drone in the blazer, clutching a long, black metal poker in one hand—had wound his way around the two battling crazies and continued running across the street toward Cole.

  “Cole, come on!” Zoe shouted.

  “Get inside! Get inside!” the kid joined in.

  Cole didn’t need further encouragements from either one of them. He turned around and jumped up onto the sidewalk, then all but lunged through the door Zoe was holding open. He heard the bang! as she slammed it shut behind him, followed quickly by the clack-clank of a tumbler lock turning and sliding home.

  Ashley was hiding behind one of the sofas in front of him, peering out from behind the armrest back at him. Cole glimpsed broken furniture, dried blood splashed across walls and mailboxes, parts of a broken cell phone, and a severed hand all in the space of a few seconds.

  He turned around just as Zoe staggered toward him. He reached out to grab her, and she started to say something when there was a loud crash! and the office drone smashed the security glass on the right side of the double doors with his metal poker. Stray glass shards flashed across the lobby, singing like missiles.

  Cole grabbed Zoe and swung her away from the glass, shielding her body with his own. Pieces of glass bounced off his thick blazer, and more pelted his pants legs. A few might have even ricocheted off the back of his head, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Go!” Cole shouted as he pushed Zoe back.

  He followed her for a few steps before stopping and turning around. The office drone was reaching in through the broken security glass with one hand, trying to reach the lock nearby. His eyes snapped left to right before finally landing back on Cole. Blood dripped from his eye sockets, falling down his cheeks like sheets of rain.

  Cole clutched the bat in his hands and began moving toward the doors.

  The crazy snarled at him, pale and cracked lips almost forming something that looked like—

  Was that a grin?

  Did the motherfucker just grin at him?

  “I think he did,” the Voice said.

  Yeah, the crazy probably had.

  Cole moved faster, but before he could reach the doors, the crazy pulled his arm out of the broken security glass. The man was still grinning at Cole when he turned and fled.

  Cole watched the crazy bound across the street, passing the butcher, who had gotten the upper hand on the man from the McDonald’s and was chopping his victim repeatedly in the chest with his cleaver. Cole thought the office drone might slow down to strike the unaware butcher, but instead he kept running before disappearing into the mouth of an alleyway across the street.

  “Sonofabitch grinned at you,” the Voice said. “What do you think he meant by that?”

  How the hell should I know.

  “Hey, just making conversation.”

  You can stop now.

  “Where’s he going?” Zoe asked as she reappeared behind Cole, then peered through the broken window alongside him.

  “I don’t know,” Cole said.

  “Did he just…? I thought I saw him…?”

  “I guess she saw it, too,” the Voice said.

  At least it wasn’t just him. For a second there, Cole was entertaining the idea that he’d been seeing things.

  The butcher had stumbled up from the bloody remains of his victim. His clothes were covered in fresh blood, and thick gobs of red wetness dripped from the cleaver in his hand. Cole was grateful he couldn’t see the remains of the other crazy, not that his mind stopped imagining all the possibilities anyway.

  “I might throw up,” Zoe whispered.

  But she didn’t. Fortunately, because she was standing next to him, and he might have gotten more than a few chunks on him.

  The butcher stared across the street at them, but there wasn’t the same mischievous look that the drone had flashed Cole earlier. At least, Cole didn’t see it. If anything, all he saw was a mask of blood and desire, though a desire for what, he wasn’t entirely sure.

  “Who are you kidding? You know what he wants,” the Voice said.

  Blood. The butcher wanted blood. His, or anyone’s.

  “Bingo.”

  The butcher glanced around, as if searching for a new victim. Finding none, he turned and ran off down the street. Cole followed the big man for as long as he could until the crazy disappeared behind a parked white van and was never seen again.

  For now, anyway.

  For now…

  Chapter 11

  “You’re bleeding,” Zoe said.

  “What?”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Cole sat down on the edge of a desk that was parked near the middle of the lobby. There was a chair nearby, toppled over, with red and other colored liquids spilled over much of it. The man who had been monitoring this guard station, Cole thought, hadn’t met a very nice end. Either that,
or he’d done most of the meting out of those not-very-nice endings.

  He looked down at himself but couldn’t see blood anywhere. “Where?”

  “Behind you,” Zoe said. She circled the desk to get a better look at him from behind. “It’s not too bad. It doesn’t look too bad, anyway. It’s just jutting out of your back.”

  He tried to get a better look, but of course couldn’t see past his shoulders. “What is it?”

  “A piece of glass. It’s near here,” she said, indicating the area between her scapula and clavicle. “It must have happened when that crazy broke the glass. Thank you for that, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  “You know what.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You shielded me with your body. You don’t remember?”

  Cole shook his head. Did he do that?

  “I don’t remember,” he said.

  “Well, you did. So, thanks.”

  “Okay.”

  Zoe let out an amused noise. “That’s it? I thanked you for saving my life, and all you say is okay?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know. It just seemed like such an underwhelming response when someone thanks you for saving their life. Again.”

  “You’re welcome?”

  “That’s better.” Then, “Now don’t move. Let me get a better look at this thing.”

  Cole sat still and tried to see if he could feel any pain, but there was nothing. And he hadn’t felt anything during the couple of insane minutes when the crazies attacked, either.

  A couple of minutes? That was it? It’d felt like an eternity while it was happening. But Cole was used to that. Time always seemed to slow down when he was in the middle of combat. It’d been a while since he lived through that, though.

  “Ah, the good old days,” the Voice said.

  He wouldn’t exactly call those days good.

  “We have different memories, then.”

  No kidding.

  The Voice laughed, but Cole ignored it and focused on the lobby doors instead. They remained closed, and he couldn’t see anyone or anything outside through the shattered security glass. The office drone crazy that had tried to come in hadn’t returned, and neither had the butcher—or anyone else—lurking, previously unseen, around the area.

  Cole didn’t know how he knew, but he just knew that those two weren’t the only ones out there. He remembered how all three—the drone, the butcher, and the third one—had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Which wasn’t true at all. They hadn’t just blinked into existence.

  No, they’d been hiding.

  They’d been waiting.

  They’d been biding their time.

  “Crazies, but smart crazies,” the Voice said. “That’s gonna make getting to Bear Lake more difficult.”

  Maybe…

  “No maybe about it, buddy. We’re gonna have to rethink our strategy.”

  Strategy? Cole didn’t even know they had one.

  “We do,” the Voice said. “I just haven’t told you yet, that’s all.”

  Cole waited for the inevitable laughter, but it didn’t come.

  “Psych!” the Voice said a few seconds later, before it did, finally, laugh.

  Sonofabitch.

  Cole looked over at Ashley, who had sat down on a lime-green sofa next to the row of mailboxes embedded in the lobby wall. The room was huge, with a back hallway behind them and two elevators next to that. A door led into a staircase—Cole only knew that because of stairs written on a sign above it—but otherwise it was just the three of them inside the building.

  Of course, Cole knew that wasn’t the case. The black kid that had warned them about the crazies hiding about was also around. He was above them, on the fifth floor. Cole made a mental note of that even as he tried to get a better angle on the piece of glass that was apparently sticking out of his shoulder. He failed, but fortunately Zoe could see better than he could.

  “Is it bad?” he asked.

  “You have a piece of glass sticking out of you,” Zoe said.

  “I mean, is it bleeding? What’s the blood loss situation?”

  “It’s not too bad. Just a trickle.” Then, after a brief pause, “What should I do?”

  “Pull it out.”

  “How?”

  “With your fingers.”

  “Just…pull it out?”

  “First, see if you can find a rag or towel to stanch the bleeding, just in case.”

  “Right. Just in case.”

  She began opening drawers behind him one by one. Cole took the moment to check on Ashley, who didn’t look as if she could be pulled away from the couch she’d settled on. Her hands were in her lap, and she looked at Cole with those big green eyes of hers, as if waiting for him to tell her to do something.

  “Are we going to die?” the girl asked him.

  He gave her a forced smile, hoping it was at least semi-convincing enough to fool a child. “Not if I can help it.”

  “What if you can’t help it?”

  “No one’s dying,” Zoe said, her voice even more believable than his had been. “Will this do?” she asked as she held out a small roll of toilet paper from behind him.

  Cole wondered what the building’s guard, or doorman, or whoever he’d been that sat at this desk day in and day out, was doing with toilet paper in one of his drawers.

  Instead of asking that inane question, though, he said, “It should work.”

  “You sure?” Zoe asked.

  “Yes.”

  Cole focused back on the front doors across the lobby from them. He could see outside through the broken security glass and couldn’t detect any movements out there. Of course, that didn’t mean there wasn’t any—

  “Fuck!” Cole screamed when Zoe pulled the piece of glass out of him.

  He heard it fall and break against the floor.

  “I need you to—” Zoe said, but Cole beat her to it and took off his blazer.

  Zoe pulled his dress shirt up and pressed a wad of the soft toilet paper against his shoulder.

  “You didn’t give me a chance to get ready,” Cole said.

  “Sorry. I thought it’d be easier if you didn’t know it was coming.”

  “Well, it wasn’t.”

  “Sorry,” she said again. “Anyway, it wasn’t that big. Just a small piece. Your blazer did a lot to protect you.”

  “How small was it?”

  “Three inches?”

  “And how many inches was inside me?”

  “About one managed to get through your blazer and shirt underneath.” She held the toilet paper against him in silence for a moment, before adding, “I guess it hurts more coming out than it did going in. You didn’t even feel it until I told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks for saving my mom,” Ashley said from the sofa.

  Cole looked over and gave her a half-smile. “Sure, kid.”

  “So what do we do now?” Zoe asked.

  “First, make sure you don’t bleed to death,” the Voice said.

  I’m not going to bleed to death.

  “Famous last words, buddy.”

  Shut up. You’re not helping.

  “I beg to differ.”

  Beg all you want, but you’re still not helping.

  “Har har,” the Voice said. “So funny I forgot to laugh.”

  “We’ll rest in here for a while, then figure something out,” Cole said out loud.

  His body had suddenly felt tired, his joints aching in spots he didn’t know was possible. He’d forgotten, he realized, what it was like to be locked in a life-and-death battle and acting on pure instinct just to survive. He’d forgotten, but it was all rushing back now.

  “You got soft,” the Voice said.

  I was retired.

  “Another word for soft.”

  Oh, shut up.

  “They were like the others,” Zoe was saying. “The three out there. Their eyes… It’s th
e eyes, Cole. You saw it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “They were like the ones from yesterday. Like they were possessed.” Then, almost whispering the question, “Do you believe in gods and demons?”

  “No,” Cole said without hesitation.

  He’d never believed, and yesterday and today hadn’t changed that. There was an explanation here, even if he didn’t know it. Or was even close to discovering it. But there had to be one. He knew it, even if he didn’t know it.

  “Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better,” the Voice said.

  “I didn’t use to either,” Zoe was saying. She’d lessened the pressure noticeably against his back with the wad of tissue paper.

  “So you’ve changed your mind?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what to think anymore. Things like what happened yesterday shouldn’t be possible.”

  “But it did.”

  “Exactly. It did.”

  “Maybe it’s time to believe,” the Voice said.

  No.

  “You’re not even going to think about it?”

  There’s an explanation. I just haven’t found it yet.

  The Voice chortled. “Denial’s not just a river in Egypt, buddy.”

  Instead of wasting his time with the Voice, Cole glanced around at the lobby before climbing off the desk and pulling his shirt back down and stuffing the hem into his pants.

  “What are you doing?” Zoe asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re still bleeding.”

  “You said it wasn’t bad.”

  “It’s not, but…”

  “Then I’ll be okay.”

  “It doesn’t hurt?”

  It did, a little, now that he knew it existed.

  But he said anyway, “No.”

  Cole took out the cell phone from his pocket and glanced down at it. He shouldn’t have bothered. There were still no bars, and pressing Emily’s prerecorded number didn’t do anything.

  “Anything?” Zoe asked.

  He shook his head and pocketed the cell phone.

  “Is it possible all the cell towers can be down at once?” Zoe asked. “I thought technology had come a long way and something like that couldn’t happen. Don’t we have satellites and things like that circling around up in space?”