34
Maggie looked at Theresa, and now a new shine was in her eyes. Hope and fear in equal parts.
Christopher had never realized before how closely the two were related. Not just two sides of the same coin, but more like colors that bled into one another. Hoping for something's existence meant a necessary terror borne of the knowledge it could die. And fear met its end only in hope – often irrational, but still alive and with roots in the terror that was the only reason for its existence.
"What do you mean?" asked Maggie. "How can… can…." Her voice choked to silence. She tried to continue. Couldn't.
Theresa's smile melted away. She still looked hopeful. The smile that she had worn had changed her face; made it not merely attractive as it had been since Christopher had first laid eyes on her, but flat-out beautiful. Even now, without the smile, the beauty was still there, though more restrained. Hope in the face of nightmare.
None of them had awoken from the night of terror… but Theresa seemed to think there might actually be a dawn.
"You said they infect us with this download?" she said. "And that the girls weren't mature at first, so maybe that's why the zombies just attacked them, and why they didn't attack each other?"
"Yeah." Christopher nodded. A thought hit him. "That might be why Maggie wasn't infected with a queen, and why Buck didn't end up with a king. Maybe they were just too old to be hosts." He laughed, then added, "Especially Buck."
Buck bristled. Theresa hurried on, "So maybe they're still young."
No one spoke. Aaron finally said, "I don't think we follow, Theresa."
"What if…." She struggled for a moment, looking for the right words. "You know how you said the zombies downloaded at first? Until they were completely changed to what they needed to be?" Christopher nodded. So did Buck, in perfect time. Again he wondered how much they were really alike.
Please, God, kill me now.
"Well, what if the girls are still downloading?" she said.
"They aren't," said Buck.
Aaron shook his head. "Nope. They haven't done that breathing thing, not like the others. Not for a while, at least."
"No," Theresa agreed. "But they are still changing. We know that. They're changing in a way that allows them to call the zombies. To call and choose guardians, and put those guardians under their control. They're changing in ways that allow them to make the zombies attack each other. And if we're right that these things evolve with downloads, then maybe the queens are still getting some broadcasts, just like they're broadcasting. Not from whatever changed the zombies in general, maybe from a closer source, like –"
"The king," said Maggie. Her voice hitched, choked.
"Yeah," said Theresa. "Changing for him, so they'll be ready when he finds them."
"So?" said Buck. "What does it matter if they're still changing?"
Christopher looked at the ultrasound monitor. The thing it showed was hard to look at. Not just because it was dancing along a little girl's spine, clinging to bone and swimming through flesh. There was also that disconcerting way it –
He pointed. "There," he said. He didn't speak loudly, but everyone looked immediately. Just in time to see what he had seen.
The thing – the queen – faded. Just as it had done a number of times before. Not as though it was passing out of the range of the ultrasound, but like it was simply disappearing. Leaving the range not merely of sight but of reality itself.
"I bet that has something to do with it," he said.
"What?" said Buck. "What's it doing?"
(It writhed up and down a ladder, trickled on legs that phased in and out of reality, appendages that Christopher couldn't quite see because they existed in so many different places – not just spots in this world, but spots in many worlds – at once.)
"I think it's going someplace else. Getting instructions, getting its… its download instructions, then coming back here."
"Yeah," said Buck. He whispered the word, and for a moment he looked almost hypnotized. "Yeah, that sounds right. That's what she's doing." He shook his head. Rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. Christopher remembered his father doing that a few times when he'd had one too many drinks on those rare occasions they'd actually been home together. The movement of a man caught in something that he both wanted and despised.
Buck's still under the spell. At least a little.
What will happen when it takes control of him again?
Buck shook his head. "Okay," he said, and his face furrowed in the familiar creases of irritation with the universe. "So they're still getting signals. What does that mean? What does it help us?" His big hands clenched into fists, and for a moment Christopher worried that the big man might be the one to attack the girls. Might try to stop the thing that was trying to take over his will, to subsume his existence in something alien and ugly.
Amulek put a hand on Buck's shoulder. Buck put his own hand atop the teen's. Clenched it so hard his knuckles glowed. "What can we do?" he said.
"It's not enough to stop the signal with your little gizmo," said Theresa.
Christopher looked at the monitor. Watched the queen phasing in and out. And almost jumped as she returned, because… was she larger now?
He shook his head. "No," he said. "No, I don't think my 'little gizmo' is enough – turns out size does matter. And I don't think we have much time before it's academic."
"What if we destroy the body entirely?" asked Aaron.
Maggie sobbed at that. Buck reached his free hand to her. Clutched her arm. She fell into him. Curled up tight like –
(an insect a bug a pupa about to rip its way free and fly)
– a little girl. But she didn't say no. Didn't object.
Christopher did. "I think if we kill these girls, that's the end." He looked at Aaron. At Theresa. "I think if anything happens to them, it's game over."
35
"You want to explain that, son?" said Aaron. "Near as I can tell, you just got done telling us that these girls are hosting queens, and that the king wants them real bad. So it seems to me that our first priority is stopping that from happening. Any way we can."
"I agree," said Christopher. "But think about it. If we do something to Lizzy and Hope –"
(Lizzy and Hope, not just "the girls," they're part of us, part of what's happening, part of… whatever's drawn us together)
"– then what's going to happen to the things inside them?"
"They'd die," said Theresa. "And the king wouldn't have a way to do whatever he wants to do."
Christopher shook his head. "No. Lizzy and Hope would die. But the queens…." He pointed at the ultrasound monitor. At the queen, dancing in and out of flesh and bone, in and out of reality and a place far beyond. "I think they'd just go somewhere else. Wherever they came from. The place all this started from. And then…."
"Then what?" said Buck.
"Then new hosts would be found. Only this time they'd be right there for the king. He'd have them, and he'd be able to do whatever he wanted with them. Remember the top floor of the Wells Fargo building? That weird wall made out of bodies?"
Aaron shuddered. Actually shuddered. "That's going to have a starring role in my nightmares for a long time."
"And remember how the zombies let us in, but wouldn't let us out?"
"Yeah." Aaron looked like he was starting to understand, but he waited for Christopher to say it.
"So maybe they were waiting for us to come in… so they'd have extra options. Extra… hosts. In case something happened to the first ones. The zombies planned for this possibility. I bet right now there are others, already wrapped up in that silk, waiting for the queens to be downloaded into them in case one of their… current hosts is destroyed." He snapped, looked fully at Aaron. "Remember your theory that all the zombie stories we've made up in the past were really misinformation, ideas implanted so that we'd be afraid of them, wouldn't be able to handle this?"
"Yup."
"And
in all those stories the one way to not just kill but completely assure yourself the creatures have been destroyed is to incinerate them." He pointed at the girls. "So we remember that. We destroy the bodies completely. We destroy the hosts. And the queens…"
"… zap back to their new hosts, and we're screwed," finished Buck.
Christopher nodded. "And my guess is that would be the end of us. All of us."
"Then how can we stop this?" Maggie lay a hand on Lizzy's still form. The little girl was drooling, looking startlingly normal in her diaper. No evidence at what she held within her, at what she was becoming.
"What was it you were going to tell us before, e hine?" said Mo. "How can we stop all this from happening?"
Theresa looked shaken by everything that Christopher had said. But she drew herself visibly together and said, "That doodad stops some cell waves, right?"
Christopher nodded. "It's not very strong, though. We're going to have to keep the girls close for it to work on them."
"What if we completely stop all waves?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if we went somewhere that no waves, none of any kind, could penetrate?"
"I don't know. It would trap the queens, I guess." Christopher's brow furrowed. "Cut off the king. Make it impossible for him to breed."
Maggie made a choking noise. Kept her face buried in Buck's chest. He stroked her hair.
"And what happens when a queen can't breed?"
Christopher grinned. "The queen and king both die. And so does the rest of the hive." Then his smile died. "But there's no place like that. Even in here, in a survivalist bunker with lead walls, the girls called the zombies. How can you beat that?"
Theresa chuckled. "Oh, believe me, I can definitely beat that."
36
"You know where Micron is?"
Christopher guffawed. "You know who I am, right?"
"A man-child with impulse control problems?" said Theresa.
Surprisingly, Buck was the one who came to his rescue. "He used to be the Governor's son." He shook his head, rocking Maggie a bit as he did. "And everyone in the Treasure Valley knows where Micron is, so your question was stupid on its face."
Theresa looked like she was visibly restraining herself from committing battery.
Micron was one of the reasons that Idaho wasn't the hick state a lot of people thought it was, but was in fact a focus of high-technology in the United States. The company headquarters was in Boise, but it had a production/R&D plant in Meridian, just to the west of the capital city. The company, a multinational behemoth worth over thirty billion dollars – at least, before the Change – had primarily specialized in semiconductors used for computer memory, and had employed some of the best and brightest in the state.
Coincidentally, they were very high on (ex-) Governor Elgin's ass-kissing list.
Christopher had been to the Meridian site a few times – photo ops between his Governorosity and the company bigwigs when they rolled out some new gizmo that was the size of a fingernail and apparently would change the universe. But he didn't really know much about the place. Other than that it had pretty good food at the cafeteria, and some of the female employees had been surprisingly hot.
Of course, that was all before the Change. Now it was just a bunch of buildings, and the hot women were probably running around gnawing on things.
"I had an ex who worked there," said Theresa.
"Okay," said Buck. "But I still don't understand what that has to do with anything."
"They have an RF anechoic chamber, don't they," said Aaron.
Theresa looked surprised. Not just that someone had said the words, but that the cowboy had been the one to do so. It was easy to forget, with his rough appearance and Aw, shucks drawl, but Aaron was deadly smart.
Theresa nodded.
"What's that?" asked Buck. Irritation coloring his voice. "What's an anticolic chamber?"
"Anechoic," said Theresa. "An RF anechoic chamber is a room that basically completely cuts off all incoming and outgoing waves – radio, electromagnetic, radioactive, everything."
"What would one need such a thing for?" said Mo. "It sounds very expensive."
Theresa shrugged. "I don't understand the science of it. Something to do with measuring signal interference in circuits. I didn't get more info than that – my ex shouldn't have told me about it at all, considering how hush-hush Micron is with their R&D, and he got all freaked out when he blabbed in the first place."
"So we get there, and… what?" said Buck.
"Well, we hope that the things in the girls get locked into a kind of… I dunno… suspended hibernation? And that locks down on the zombies and what they're trying to do. At least that buys us some time to figure out the next move."
Everyone was silent for a time. Then Christopher spoke. "I like it." He smiled at Theresa. "After the Apocalypse ends, remind me to buy you a drink."
"You just want to get into my pants."
He shrugged. "I'm going to plead the fifth on that one."
Buck was frowning. "Much as I love witnessing overblown hormones at work, there's something we kinda glossed over."
Aaron nodded. "I figure we're somewhere in Oregon." He turned to Mo. "Right?"
Mo nodded. "I have my home in Nyssa, but when the men who work for me started acting strangely, Amulek and I made our way here. We are now just south of Crow City."
"Strange?" Buck snorted. "Helluva way to describe it. And where in God's name is Crow City?"
"It's about thirty miles into Oregon," said Aaron. "Not exactly a bustling metropolis."
"How far to Micron?" asked Christopher.
"About three or four hours, normally," said Aaron. "Now?" He shook his head. "I don't know." He looked at the unconscious children. The wounded hunter. Flexed his own bandaged shoulder. "I just don't know."
37
"So how do we get there?" asked Buck.
"Well, there are two ways," said Aaron. "We can take the 95 freeway to the 84, or we can take Highway 20-26. The first one's a bit quicker, but –"
"But what?" said Theresa. "I say quicker. We get going now, maybe we can get there by sundown."
Aaron shook his head. Mo did, too. "Me huritau anō, kaua e kōwhiria i runga i te whāwhai, i te pōnānā. Let us not act in haste, e hine. Sometimes it is the slow man who catches the shark."
Theresa gawked at him. "Do you really talk like that?"
"He does. Kinda awesome, huh?" said Christopher. He turned to Aaron. "What's the problem with the fast way, cowboy?"
"Well, what do you think happens to a freeway when half the people on it turn into zombies all at once?"
Christopher thought about it. The image wasn't a pretty one.
"There is little traffic in this part of the land. The highway should be clear of obstacles, for a time." The Māori looked at his hands. "At the least, it should be clear of cars."
Christopher tried not to think about what he meant by the caveat.
"How far is this little town, whatsit, Crow City?" asked Buck.
"Ten miles north," said Mo.
"How the hell are we supposed to get there?" Buck exploded to his feet. "We've got two little kids in comas who have to stay like – what?" He gestured at the makeshift cell jammer.
"I'd say the range is less than ten feet. Maybe five," said Christopher.
"So we've got to keep them five feet away from that doohickey, we're all exhausted, most of us are wounded, and we'll, what, walk ten miles? And then another couple hundred miles across zombie-infested territory – against zombies who might be confused or might be out to eat us because their 'king' tells them to – and that's assuming any of this is right? Which, I might add, is a huge assumption considering that this kid," and he jerked a big thumb in Christopher's direction, "is the one who came up with the whole theory in the first place?"
Mo straightened. Still wounded, but again Christopher was struck by the fact that this was a very rich, very powerful man. Som
eone who had the wherewithal to build a hidden bunker with nearly infinite resources, who had picked up a living buzz saw with his bare hands and used it against a dozen zombies.
"My friend, calm yourself," said Mo. "I cannot speak for all of what has been said. I have no answers beyond what I feel – though I feel that much of what has been said here is truth. And you yourself said something much the same, did you not?" He held Buck's gaze with his own. The two big men stared at one another for a moment. Not in a challenging way, but in a way that Christopher was hard-pressed to define for a moment. Then he realized: it was as though the Māori were a big brother, trying to impress on his younger sibling the importance of what he was saying.
Buck nodded. His lips pursed. He accepted.
Fate. Only Mo could have had this effect on Buck. He had to be here, so he was.
Mo's eyes shifted. He took in the entire group. "I do not know what lays ahead. Not all. But I can speak to how we shall get to Crow City, at least. And I can say this." His eyes twinkled. "We shall travel in the greatest style."
38
The first step had been the scariest. Leaving the bunker.
They had only been there a matter of hours, and already Christopher had come to rely on it as a place of refuge, of comfort, of safety. Even though it had been all those things for only a short time – that time had been one of unexpected bliss.
Still, when Mo told Amulek to "get the go-bags," and the teen brought out seven backpacks, the fear amplified to near terror. "Good," said Mo approvingly. "I do not think we should bring any for the little girls, either, Amulek. They shall share our stores." He turned to Christopher. "Inside each bag is supplies for seventy-two hours, with only water lacking – though there are water filtration units inside each."
Christopher hardly heard the descriptions of the bags. All he heard were calculations in his mind: Seven bags. Nine people. Minus two bags for the girls.
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