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

the laborious process of wiggling out of his sleeping bag. “I'll eat on the road.”
    It was a beautiful day. Not the sort of summer heat that pushed you to hate nature, instead enough cloud cover to dapple the landscape as they rolled by. Kell watched the slow meander of sunbeams lighting up shadowed places with casual interest.
    They saw no swarms as the van cut through the area infested the night before. There were remarkably few singletons as well, and Kell thought it might be a result of the chemical release not far away. Human beings had a middling sense of smell at best, but the undead used it as a primary method of finding prey. If there was even the faintest residue hanging about, it would be a miles-wide warning sign for the dead to stay away.
    It wasn't unheard-of. Most communities Kell had seen endured swarm attacks, and burning the undead often had the same effect, if for a shorter time. Ammonia would do the trick, but only held them off for so long. A brief flash of an idea came and went in an instant, dismissed as fast as he had it. Keeping zombies away was pointless if you had to poison the land—and possibly yourself—to do it.
    The further east they went, the more the landscape changed. Iowa gave Kell a false sense of the world, pervasive even after a lifetime spent in cities. The wide, windy plains were home to almost endless movement in wild wheat and other plants, but poor in structures and cities in any number.
    Now they moved toward greater concentrations of what had once been civilization, and Kell's mind needed time to adjust to it. Even though most of what he saw was at a distance—a purposeful choice to minimize the risk of encountering other people—it was still a jarring transition.
    He was just getting used to it when the van lurched, Lee cursing like the Marine he was as he was slammed against the dashboard. Kell wanted to chide him for choosing to stand in the stairwell again, but decided bruised ribs would teach the lesson just as well.
    They came to a halt, the muffled clinking of weapons and supplies dying out just as Marco let out a low whistle. Kell unbuckled himself and made his way to the front. Standing behind Marco, who was hunched forward over the wheel in slack-jawed wonder, Kell saw why they had stopped.
    A herd of horses had wandered across the road. Not horses as Kell had ever seen them, carefully tended and tame. These were something else entirely. They had none of the controlled, easy manner he expected. They glanced at the van suspiciously, tossing their heads and sending long, tangled manes flying.
    They were wild. Probably young enough that they'd never lived any other way.
    “What...what do I do, here?”
    Kell was at a loss. There was enough pure mass in the small herd to disable the van if the horses got it in their heads to try.
    “Are you serious?” Lee croaked from beside them. “Just honk the horn at them. They'll scatter.”
    Marco looked at Lee with doubt in his eyes. “You sure that won't just make them angry?”
    Lee laughed with a wince. “Where are you from, Mars? They're wild animals. They get scared of loud noises. No different than half the things I used to honk off the road back in Texas.”
    Marco honked, which if Kell was being honest seemed like a risky move with several tons of angry horse a handful of yards away, but it worked. They scattered, muscles rippling beneath coats of various colors, and Kell thought he understood the interest early humanity had in horses. They were big and strong enough to reach right down to the reptile part of his brain and make him unreasonably fearful, but there was a deep beauty in them as well. For a second he wanted to be out there with them, riding at that breakneck gallop and feeling the wind slice across his skin as it did their manes and fur.
    “You falling in love there, Kell?”
    Mason said it from behind him, but there was a smile on his face. “Used to watch wild horses with my dad when we'd go