The Fall (Book 5): Exodus in Black by Joshua Guess Page A

“Doesn’t look like they found the fuel tanks under the floor. I uncovered the gauges while I was waiting for you. Still all there.”
    Kell looked at the still-smoking wreckage of the mercenary vehicles in the yard. “It’s a miracle those didn’t do more damage. Mason’s work, I assume?”
    Hal grinned. “That’s what I’m told. Car fires aren’t that bad, especially when they happen on top of bare dirt like these. Honestly, I think the three of them did a pretty good job not fucking this place up.”
    Emily, who had been observing thoughtfully, sighed. “It’s too bad we’ll have to burn it to the ground once we leave.”
    “What?” Kell said. “Why?”
    Her lips pursed as if she’d bitten into something awful. “We can’t leave it here for anyone else to find. Think about it. This place is remote and with a few weeks of work would be a solid place to live again. Anyone could stumble on it and decide to move in. If Rebound is still after us, they could mistake squatters for us. Anyone who lives here is going to be targeted.”
    “Damn,” Kell said again.
     
     
     
    The lab wasn’t a total loss, but the difference was negligible. The various fires had taken their toll on the paperwork and journals, and without power the biological samples and cultures were useless. He spent an hour searching through everything he could find and tossing useful stuff in his backpack. Everything else went on the flames with the bodies of the invaders. He wanted to leave nothing behind that would help the enemy.
    Greg and Allen reappeared during that time, bandaged in several places each but otherwise fine. The three teens, whose names Kell never could remember, stayed in the RV to assist Judith.
    “Want any help?” Greg, the thick-chested of the two, asked Kell as he threw the last pile of ruined papers on the fire.
    “I’m done with the basement, but I was going to look around if you want to come with,” Kell said, eyeing them. “You guys up to it?”
    Allen, the one with the slimmer, lanky frame, waved an arm bandaged from palm to bicep. “Mostly just burns. We’ll manage. Lead the way.”
    The three men worked their way through the compound’s haphazard structures slowly. The barn was a total loss as a building, though Hal was correct that the buried fuel tanks were fine. The cold house, which was basically an absorption refrigerator the size of a large shed, was also in bad shape. It looked like someone trying to get away sideswiped it with a tank; one entire wall of the heavily insulated building was crushed inward.
    “Don’t guess we’ll be getting any food from that,” Greg observed.
    Kell shrugged. “Maybe. There was a lot of cured meat inside. It can survive not being cold. Only one way to find out.”
    As it happened, they did recover a fair amount of food from the shack. It took all three of them to wrangle the door from is crooked frame, and even then Kell had to put his back into the collapsed wall to keep it from falling in on everyone.
    “I’ll sort all this and get it stored,” Allen offered. “Don’t want to make Emily do all the work.”
    Kell chuckled. “I’d almost like to see you try that, except I’ve had all the blood on me I want in the last two days.”
    He knew they’d find something terrible in the low row of communal housing before they opened the first door. The smell from outside was faint but obvious. Bodies.
    There were less of them inside the plywood shacks than he would have thought. Eleven total, though only two had died of gunshot wounds. The others had taken injuries—the dozens of shafts of light streaming in from outside made it clear someone had unloaded on the place—but hadn’t been killed outright. Rather than suffer and risk coming back to harm the living, they’d killed themselves. Or, as Kell noted upon further thought, a few had killed the others. Three bodies had blades jutting out from skulls, others simply had knife wounds to the skull.
    “I