The Fall (Book 2): Dead Will Rise by Joshua Guess Read Free Book Online Page A

their posts to wake the rest of the group. He kept watch for a while longer, ignoring the shuffle of tired feet and the yawns of people whose routines still demanded coffee after all this time.
    Come to that, his own body wanted caffeine something fierce, but he ignored the desire.
    Kell slid to the RV's ladder, climbed down quickly and looked for Scott and Dan to give them report. He spotted the pair with the other group, grinning as they took bowls of food—dried fruit and granola, by the look of it—from the same young woman who'd given Kell his sandwich the day before. Eager to give report and spend an hour or two relaxing in the passenger seat of the RV, Kell grabbed his spear from beside the ladder and strode forward.
    Halfway to the group, the sun poked out over the hills to send bright rays of light at the gathering of survivors.
    That was when the gunfire started.
    The shots were grouped close, three single cracking reports and then silence. No one screamed; the only noises Kell heard from the convoy, as he threw himself back behind the RV, were the shouts telling people to get down, stay down, and wait for orders.
    The standing procedure was for anyone inside a vehicle to stay there. As he stood on the RV's passenger side waiting for the next round of bullets to score a victim, a tapping sound caught his attention.
    Kate's face peered at him through the window, worried. “Laura is on the other side,” she said, voice muffled through the thick Plexiglas they'd installed. “She can't spot the shooters. The woods on the other side are too dense to see much of anything.”
    Kell nodded, but before he could reply a faint smell caught his attention.
    “Fuck me,” he breathed, then raised his voice. “Ammonia! They're pushing a swarm toward us!”
    His statement was confirmed a moment later when Laura's loud cursing penetrated the wall of the RV. “Swarm just came from the trees!”
    Pulse pounding, he struggled to assess the situation. Whoever was firing at them didn't want to damage anything, that much was obvious. If the goal were to kill the group at any cost, they would've fired from hiding instead of risking the use of a zombie swarm as a weapon. For now, at least, the enemy used gunfire to keep his people from moving around and forming up, waiting for the zombies to do their work.
    “Shit, shit, shit,” Kell muttered.
    “We're coming out,” Kate shouted through the window. “Laura and I can fire from under the truck--”
    “No!” Kell said, frustrated. “You come out, they'll start shooting again.”
    “So what do we do?” Kate asked angrily.
    “I don't know, give me a second.”
    The shuffling crunch of bodies moving through brush reached his ears, too loud for his comfort. The swarm had approached while he argued. Now that he paid attention to it, he could hear Scotty shouting a request for orders.
    Kell's mind raced. Of all the people not in vehicles, he was the lone one of them not massed in the group thirty feet away. An idea formed, and the swarm gave him no time to second-guess it.
    “Scotty! Dan! Anyone with guns over there start shooting carefully. Just slow them down for a few seconds.”
    Kate stared at him through the window. “Kell, what--”
    Their eyes locked. “You'll know when to start shooting,” he said. “You and Laura pull the windows out and lay down suppressing fire. You have about twenty seconds.”
    He turned from her before she could argue, more loud cursing coming through the RV walls. Kell's fingers fumbled in his belt pouch for a moment until they found what he was looking for. The first shots rang out from Dan and Scotty's group, and Kell took three huge steps back from the western side of the RV.
    With careful aim, he threw the ammonia ball, a thin glass globe encased in candle wax, at the trapped group of survivors. The smell would be enough to hold off the undead for at least a few seconds, though Kell doubted an easy meal would be ignored for long, no matter