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

doesn’t like me,” Kincaid said. “It’s because I act on my rational arguments without wringing my hands before or after.”
    It was a nice way of reminding her he’d killed a man who had betrayed their trust and was likely to do it again, just to make things easier on the group.
    Her eyes wandered over the paper again, tallying the items in the small arsenal.
    “Still, though,” Emily said. “It’d be nice if someone was there to back Mason up. You know, just in case.”
    Kincaid raised an eyebrow and sipped his coffee. “I’m game if you are.”
    It almost frightened her, how close she came to saying yes. She knew perfectly well Kincaid wasn’t offering an idiotic rush into the fight with guns blazing. Interfering that way would do much more harm than it would help. But the temptation to ride out, stay out of sight, and function as backup appealed to her much more than going over inventory and working out travel plans.
    But that was survival. For every moment of thrilling heroics, there were hours, days, or weeks of just buckling down and doing the work. Whether it was farming or figuring out fuel budgets, that was how the real world functioned.
    “No,” she said, letting the idea die. “You’re right. If Mason fails, it’s a minimal loss of life. And he has the best chance of getting the job done.”
    Kincaid looked impressed. “That’s a pretty cold calculation to make. Smallest investment for the largest return, but with people.”
    Emily laughed, low and harsh. “Man, that’s the whole fucking world nowadays.”
     
     
     
    Around noon things changed. Emily and Kell were outside, and the sense of bored sameness she’d felt since settling in at the bunker shattered at the distant sound of a motorcycle engine intruding on the day. Only one bike arrived with Kincaid and his people, and they’d sent a young woman named Kelsey out to scout nearby an hour earlier. She wasn’t due back for hours.
    “That’s not good,” Kell said as the roar of the engine echoed louder.
    Emily turned to the nearest person she could find—Cameron—and motioned her toward the bunker entrance. “Run and find Kincaid, Andrea, every adult. We might have a situation here.”
    Cameron nodded sharply, asked no questions, and sprinted off. She returned in less than two minutes heading a growing crowd of adults. The last of them piled through the door just as Kelsey reappeared, tearing toward them on the access road at dangerously high speed.
    She braked closer to the group than Emily would have liked and extended the kickstand so hastily she almost missed. Flipping up the visor on her helmet as she jogged over, Kelsey breathed a single word.
    “Swarm.”
    Judging by the sweat dripping down the scout’s face, Emily was pretty sure she knew the answer to her next question, but it had to be asked. “How big? How far away are they? Take off your helmet, girl. It’s not like they’re here already. We can all get inside in thirty seconds.”
    Kelsey’s cheeks reddened, at least what Emily could see of them. She whipped the helmet off and pushed a hank of brown hair behind her ear. “I went fifteen miles out, like you said, and started doing stop-and-check sweeps. Looks like they’re coming from the northeast, big enough to raise a dust cloud the size of a football field.”
    “Numbers?” Emily asked.
    Kelsey shook her head. “Didn’t get a good count. I stopped at two dozen, mostly because they were hard to see at a distance. I’d have had to bike cross-country to get to them. Didn’t want to risk it.” A look of sheer horror crossed her face, and the younger woman raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh, God. Did I lead them here?”
    “No,” Emily said with certainty. “They hunt by scent. They’re like dogs. They’d have caught our exhaust and other smells easily enough. Even if you hadn’t been there, they’d be our problem sooner or later.” She gave the girl a smile she didn’t feel. “You gave us