The Fall (Book 3): War of the Living by Joshua Guess Read Free Book Online Page A

before we got home, put the idea in his head so he had time to think about it. If it works, we'll be able to stop the attacks in one try.”
    Kate grimaced. “If it doesn't, you'll end up poisoning our people and get them all killed. There's a reason they shot down chemical weapons, Kell. And worse, you're drawing attention to yourself.”
    Kell twisted around, giving her a puzzled smile. “How is that worse than everyone getting killed by my stupid idea?”
    Kate didn't smile back. “Because if someone finds out you created the plague and decides to kill you for it, the chances of saving the human race go down by half. If the people fighting the Hunters die, it's just their lives lost.”
    There was no denying the horrible calculus of it. Kate was right. It was a bit of an overreaction in his opinion, as the idea he had presented to Dodger didn't scream genius.
    The basic concept was simple enough; there were plenty of chemicals that created deadly vapors when mixed, and with most of humanity gone there were huge stocks of them laying around for the taking. The reason no one in New Haven or its allied communities had gone that route was because of the huge risk such chemicals posed to the people using them. They didn't have access to containers designed both for safety for the user and easy dispersal against the enemy. The military had historically paid enormous sums of money to contractors to design those sorts of things.
    The solution came to him fully-formed, as most of his ideas did. Rather than worry about having to mix chemicals at a certain time or create a custom pressure vessel that would release a mixture exactly as needed, they could create as much gas as needed and store it in empty propane tanks. Then it would be a simple matter of finding an enclave of Hunters and breaching the tank, which could be done in any number of ways.
    “It's risky,” Kate said, interrupting his train of thought. “But if it works, you'll save a lot of lives.”
    “And kill even more people,” Kell corrected.
    “Does it bother you?” Kate asked, a curious glint in her eyes.
    Kell paused. “The necessity does. But these guys are as bad as anything we've faced. They don't get the benefit of any second thoughts.”
    His answer satisfied her, a grim fact in its own right. They spent the remainder of the trip spitballing ideas back and forth, working out wrinkles. Kate was more interested in determining the best way to release the gas from its container, while Kell wracked his brain for every scrap of chemistry he could recall. There were a lot of possibilities, each requiring a tremendous amount of work.
    “Weren't you thinking about doing this when we took on that band of marauders back up north?” Kate asked later that day.
    “Yep,” Kell replied distractedly.
    “Why is it a better idea now than it was then?”
    “Because then we had to worry about killing the prisoners,” Kell explained. “And we didn't have raw materials or the manpower needed to make it work correctly. If Will and the New Haven council get behind this, it will be doable. Risky, sure, but so is another head-on fight.”
    She didn't argue the last point at all.
     
     
    By the time they returned to New Haven, Kell had begun to doubt his idea. After debating the pros and cons with Kate for hours, it seemed impossible that someone hadn't presented this exact plan before. Propane tanks had even been used as weapons, which was how he had gotten the idea in the first place.
    There was no welcoming committee waiting to greet them. Under normal circumstances there would have been any number of volunteers at the gate to help the wounded and see to the needs of the weary travelers. The threat raised by the Hunters demanded an increase in security measures, however, and every available hand was working on the defenses. People swarmed the walls and the land in front of it, setting traps and reinforcing the rough stone as best they could.
    The truck Kell rode in