The Fall (Book 4): Genesis Game by Joshua Guess Read Free Book Online

with more stress than any child should endure, she looked even younger than the fourteen years she admitted to. She would have been, what, nine or ten when The Fall happened? Kell wondered if the dot on the letter I at the end of her name had once been a heart shape.
    “You're a kid,” Kell said. “It didn't seem right to me. I figured you deserved a chance to be better. To do something better.”
    Cari shook her head, a simple gesture but one with more weight of experience than anyone her age should have displayed. “I tried to kill you, man. And you don't know the things I've done just to survive.”
    Kell couldn't help laughing even if it was a sound without an ounce of humor. “Trust me; I'm the last person to judge someone on what they've done.”
    Cari tilted her head and immediately winced as the motion tugged on one of her injuries. “You do something bad? Why do they let you live here, then?”
    “Weird as it sounds, it's because of what I did that they want me here. I know you've been interviewed. You know your options, right?”
    Cari nodded. “Stay here and be a good girl or die.” The words were harsh, but her tone held no anger.
    “Does that bother you?” Kell asked. “The restrictions?”
    The girl shrugged. “My dad was one of the people your guys killed the other night. And I'm happy about it. He kept me alive right after things fell apart, but he had to do some bad shit. When he started in with the rest of those assholes, he put himself in charge. Made sure no one fucked with him.” A haunted, distant look took over her face. “Might be hard to understand, but when you're robbing and killing other people for what they have, it changes you. You go to sleep around a bunch of killers and rapists; you do what you have to so they don't see you as a target. Dad made sure I wasn't...weak.”
    A pang of overwhelming sympathy flooded through Kell as she spoke. He tried to imagine growing up in a situation so hellish. What Kell had done in creating Chimera was a sin of hubris at best. Even if you ignored the scope it was far worse than what Cari had to suffer through. Because it was clear she did regret those choices and the necessity of them. There was a clear streak of self-loathing for the things she must have done to armor herself against the people of her group. It ran right along the vein of diamond toughness that must have kept her breathing.
    “The thing is, if you choose to live here you're going to learn some pretty big secrets. Things we can't trust you to keep to yourself because we don't know you. If it helps, you should know that every other person living here has made the decision not to leave for the same reason. It's too much of a risk. Even our scouts and trading parties make sure they never sleep near people not from this compound, because they're afraid of what they might say out loud while they're dreaming.”
    Cari's eyes widened at that. “What the hell are you guys up to?”
    Kell gave her a tiny smile. “Can I assume that means you're agreeing to our terms?”
    She nodded.
    “My hope is that by the time you running off might become possible, you won't want to. But since you're going to be here, you need the facts. And I feel like it's my responsibility to tell you.”
    He did.
     
     
     
    The next week was a flurry of work as Kincaid put together everything the group would need for their trip. Kell wasn't involved in any of the physical labor, so he bent his efforts to helping plan everything from the load of supplies and weapons they would need to collating available information on routes and zombie migration patterns to design a better route.
    Luckily the trip wasn't going to be a long one. Their destination was a fortified community just one state over, one of the rare communities larger than a dozen people near a large town. Kell worked within the parameters Kincaid had laid out in that first meeting and in two more since, and laid out a winding route that would keep