Reckoning.2015.010.21

by Michaelbrent Collings

  The zombie leaned toward Maggie. Buck.

  Christopher struggled to move. Couldn't. Pinned.

  "Get off me, Clucky!"

  For some reason he was more annoyed than afraid. A defense mechanism, no doubt. Something to keep him from crapping his pants and curling up into a useless ball.

  Not that he wasn't useless now.

  The sizzling noise of the acid, etching its way through metal, through flesh, continued drawing razor nails across the slate of Christopher's mind. He wanted to scream.

  The zombie was going to kill them.

  Then the thing stiffened. It had free reign in the cargo space of the Marauder. Aaron was still turning around, trying to get past the huge center console of the vehicle. Amulek couldn't move from his spot as the driver. The rest of them were a hopeless tangle.

  The thing could bite them. Turn them. Change them.

  But it stopped. Stiffened.

  Christopher didn't understand.

  Then he did. And wished for a return to ignorance.

  The acid must have made its way past its skull. Not just proceeding down into the thing's chest cavity, but up as well.

  Into its brain.

  The thing twitched. Jerked.

  Danced.

  The madness that gripped all the zombies when their brains were injured came over it. Christopher could see it happen. He'd never been this close before – or at least, never been this close and not been just running for his life. He saw the thing's eyes, already feral and violent, switch off. The light inside them, whatever semblance of intelligence it had possessed, turned to something more basic. Less focused. Where it had been a beast, now it was simply a hurricane. Something with no sense of self, just a need to destroy anything and everything in reach.

  The thing fell on Buck.

  56

  Buck was turned sideways, twisted up with Maggie, still holding tight to Hope. But he didn't even try to fight the thing off. Instead, he turned his back on the thing. Curled up in a tight ball.

  In just about any other situation, just about any other person, Christopher would have suspected this was an act of blind panic. Or simply someone too terrified to face their own doom.

  But with Buck – with his friend – it wasn't that. He knew it wasn't.

  Buck was curled around Hope. He was protecting the little girl.

  Buck's eyes caught hold of his. He exhaled, nearly a cough, that managed to convey, "Why is it always me that gets the short end of the stick?"

  Then the zombie fell on him.

  There was no biting. Even if the thing's jaw hadn't been cauterized to nothing, Christopher knew it wouldn't have tried to Change Buck. The impulse to Change was something the zombies only had when they acted as… themselves.

  When gripped in this madness, there was no such urge. There was only the driving need to rend. To destroy.

  That was what the creature wanted to do. It grabbed Buck's hair with its good hand. Pulled. Yanked so hard that Christopher heard a tearing sound and saw the thing fall back with a wad of Buck's gray hair in its hand. It growled and threw itself back on the big man's back.

  Buck still didn't move, except to curl a bit tighter around Hope.

  Theresa was struggling to get out from under Maggie, but it looked like her body armor had caught on something – one of the seatbelts she was jammed against. She couldn't help. Could barely move.

  Christopher managed to free one of his legs from the tangle of people on this side of the Marauder. He shoved it into the zombie's gut, hoping he'd be able to push it back.

  Then what, genius?

  First thing's first.

  He got his foot exactly where he wanted it to be. But it sunk farther than he expected. And then punched right through the zombie's stomach. Whether the thing had rotted somehow, or been weakened by the acid, or some other mechanism, Christopher's foot just went into the creature, and out the other side.

  He screamed – disgust and revulsion combining with fear and pushing him back against the inside of the Marauder. He shook his leg, trying to free himself of the thing that had surrounded it.

  The zombie didn't seem to notice. It just pulled itself toward Buck. Clawed at the older man with its good hand, slammed the bloody stump of its other arm against him like an unruly club. Buck grunted with each attack, but still didn't move. Kept acting as a protective shell around Hope.

  Blood ran in a trickle over his forehead. Down his cheeks. It looked like he was crying blood. Christopher saw his friend begin to lose consciousness.

  And there was nothing he could do about it.

  He was caught.

  Watching his friend beaten to death in front of his eyes.

  57

  The next time the thing's arm came down across Buck's back, it made a different noise. No longer the solid flesh-on-flesh sound it had been. It made a metallic creaking. Christopher wondered if his friend had a pin in his back. Wondered if he could make fun of Buck about that.

  Wondered if Buck was going to survive to be made fun of.

  The zombie tore loose another hunk of skin. Raised its stump to hit Buck.

  Buck's eyes rolled back. Out.

  Then the zombie jerked backward.

  Christopher saw it fly through the air, and it took him a moment to realize that the rules of physics and gravity hadn't flipped sideways.

  It was Aaron.

  The cowboy had grabbed the thing by the neck, then planted his hip against the zombie's spine. Twisted. The zombie flipped through the cargo space.

  And right out the side door of the Marauder. That was the sound Christopher had heard: not impact of an arm on his friend's back, but the sound of Aaron yanking the door open. Getting ready to chuck the creature out of the vehicle.

  Christopher looked at Buck. The man's eyes fluttered open.

  "You protected her," said Christopher.

  "What?" Buck said in a drugged-sounding voice.

  "Hope. You didn't even think about it. You just protected her. And it can't be the queen thing, because we've still got the jammer." Christopher grinned. "You're actually a pretty nice guy, Clucky."

  Buck growled. "Don't tell anyone." Then he grinned back.

  And Aaron shouted.

  58

  Aaron was already short, and it wasn't like there was room for him to stand up straight in the back of the Marauder, but now it seemed like he had shrunk a good foot. He was grunting, too, flailing as his hands grabbed onto what remained of Buck's seat – the parts that hadn't been burned away by acid.

  Christopher struggled against Buck's bulk. Managed to achieve something approaching a sitting position.

  Saw what had happened.

  Five zombies had hit the front of the vehicle.

  One grabbed onto the hood. Crawled inside.

  The others blew out the back in so many crumpled chunks. Or, at least, that was what Christopher thought had happened.

  But one of them had managed to hold on. To grab the undercarriage of the vehicle, dragged along the road, back flaying away but keeping hold, never letting go.

  And when the one above had burned a hole through the floor of the Marauder, the one below saw its chance. It reached through. And grabbed Aaron.

  The acid on the floor seemed to have lost its strength after eating away at the floor. So Aaron didn't get burned by the caustic fluid – not that that was much of a consolation. The creature below the Marauder had a death grip on Aaron's jeans, just above the cowboy's right boot. The boot itself had disappeared below the level of the armor flooring, along with most of Aaron's lower leg.

  Christopher couldn't see the thing's head. That was the most important part. The part that could Change Aaron. One bite was all it would take. Just one nip. The cowboy boots would give the older man some protection, but for how long?

  Aaron grunted, and slipped a few inches deeper into the darkness beneath the Marauder.

  "Get off me," said Christopher. He shoved at Buck. "Get off!"

>   It was a measure of how out of it Buck was that he didn't complain about Christopher's words or tone. Just rolled to the side. Maggie groaned as the big man almost toppled onto her. She managed to catch him – more or less – and turn his tumble into something of a controlled fall.

  Right onto Theresa, who had been on the verge of freeing herself. Now they all tumbled to the floor.

  Christopher got to his feet. Duckwalked to Aaron. The man's muscles were straining, every bit of him rigid as he tried to pull himself up, to yank himself out of the pit below.

  The circumference of the hole, Christopher noted, was significantly smaller than the circumference of the cowboy. But the zombies were strong – so, so strong. And he had no doubt that the hand yanking on Aaron would eventually pull him down through that hole. Aaron would just be made to fit.

  Christopher reached for the hand pulling on his friend. One of the fingers was missing, which made him think for a moment of Ken –

  (We could really use your help right now, buddy.)

  – but the remaining ones felt like steel bars. Cold, immovable. Only a slick layer of ichor that streamed over one of them evidenced the fact that this was an organic – if alien – creature.

  "It's… pulling…." Aaron went down another inch.

  Christopher yanked at the fingers. Batted at the hand. It did precisely nothing. "I can't get it off!"

  A bit more of Aaron disappeared.

  Christopher heard a moan. Realized it wasn't coming from inside the Marauder. It was the sound of the creatures that still followed them. Carried in through the still-open door that Aaron had thrown open before tossing their unwelcome passenger out on his ass.

  Christopher looked at the open door. It banged shut, but didn't catch. It opened again. Shut, opened. Shut. Opened.

  He looked at Aaron. Fighting a losing battle against something far too strong to be resisted for long.

  The door opened again.

  Christopher jumped out.

  59

  On his worst days, Christopher wasn't suicidal. Or at least, his suicide dreams never involved tossing himself out a tank's little brother so he could be crushed only moments before being trampled and subsequently Changed by a zombie horde.

  So he turned in midair.

  Grabbed the side of the door as it completed its outward arc.

  Used the momentum to swing toward the rear of the Marauder. There was a ladder apparatus attached to the side there, and he grabbed it, his feet finding a small outcropping of metal that allowed him to stand for a moment.

  He looked around. Spotted the ladder they had all climbed to get into the beast of a vehicle in the first place.

  He dropped. Fell past it. Caught the last rung.

  Beat that, Aaron.

  As with the door, the catch switched his momentum. Turned downward to a jerking sideways, and he swung his body at the same time. Hitched up his feet so that they wouldn't drag on the ground below. Pushed them out.

  Beneath the Marauder.

  Where the zombie was.

  He was kicking blindly. And knew that was stupid. The thing could be waiting there with its mouth wide open in the dark, just waiting for him to try something like this. This could be his last moment as Christopher Elgin, daredevil extraordinaire, and his first moment as Oogah Boogah, zombie creep.

  His right foot connected with something firm. Not metal. Flesh.

  There was a grunt. Then the resistance the thing's body had provided disappeared. There was a slight bump as the Marauder ran over something.

  Christopher nearly fell. The precarious hold he had on the ladder disappeared as the bit of his weight that the zombie had borne – even if only for a fraction of a second – was suddenly thrown into empty space.

  One of his hands slipped.

  The other.

  He fell.

  60

  Hands clapped around his right arm.

  "Gotcha."

  The voice was gravelly. Torn.

  Beautiful.

  He looked up and saw Theresa leaning out of the Marauder, her throat trickling blood from where Ken had cut her, but not letting go in spite of the pain she must be feeling.

  Maggie had a hold on Theresa's belt. Leaning back as much as she could, adding her weight to the anchor that was keeping Christopher alive.

  "I love you!" he shouted at Theresa.

  She didn't answer. Just began pulling him up, inch by painful inch.

  He looked back. The zombies behind them were still close.

  And gaining. Fast.

  At first he couldn't figure out why. Were they speeding up?

  Not cool. Not fair.

  Then he realized that the Marauder wasn't moving as quickly as it had. And on the heels of that realization he saw the reason why: something was wrong with the rear right wheel. It must have run over some of the acid that made its way through the Marauder's flooring and to the ground below. Now it was wobbling enough that it sent a shudder through the entire vehicle. Caused it to yaw to the right, then swerve back to the left as Amulek brought it back under control.

  They weren't going to be able to get away.

  61

  Christopher threw his other hand around Theresa's wrist. Concentrated on not falling. Concentrated on not thinking about the things that were behind them.

  Coming closer. Closer.

  He looked.

  They were close enough that the ones in the front were reaching broken, wrecked, rotten fingers for the back of the Marauder. And when they pulled themselves onto it, the others would follow. Christopher remembered a video he'd seen on some nature show – ants bringing down an unlucky grasshopper who had ventured too close to their turf. Swarming over it, biting it, rendering it a crippled, crumpled twist of nothing.

  That was what the zombies would do to the Marauder. They'd bring it down. Weight, acid… relentless ferocity. The vehicle made for war was totally inadequate for the kind of rage made flesh that followed close behind.

  Theresa grunted. Christopher felt himself pulled a few inches higher. Not that going inside the Marauder was going to be much safer. But he supposed at least he'd get to die with friends.

  Everything's better with friends, right?

  Shut up, man. We're alive. As long as we're alive, there's hope.

  Sure. Right.

  Theresa – with Maggie at her back – hauled him up another foot. Far enough for him to get a foot on the bottom rung below the door. He levered himself halfway into the vehicle.

  And an explosion nearly tossed him right back out the side.

  62

  Christopher couldn't spare a glance around to figure out what had just happened. All he could do was throw himself against the Marauder's cool metal floor, try and think glue-thoughts and hold on tight as the thing swerved madly to the left. Then back to the right, correcting. Another swing to the left.

  His legs, still hanging out the door, flipped back and forth – dead weights that threatened to drag him right back out the vehicle.

  Again, he felt Theresa's hands on his arm. Yanking him inward. Pulling him to safety.

  No. Not safety. No such thing.

  He managed to lurch forward a few inches. Just enough to change his center of gravity so that it was over the lip of the Marauder, then a bit farther. He pulled a knee onto the flooring. Felt another hand on his upper arm.

  Aaron. The cowboy was still stuck in the hole, but was using it to his advantage – as leverage that allowed him to pull Christopher inside with almost his full body weight.

  Christopher was inside.

  Another explosion. It tossed him backward, and he grabbed Theresa as she went sailing past him – almost thrown right out the door he had just gone to so much trouble to get in through.

  There wasn't time for anything fancy. He just threw his arms around her as she whipped past. One of his hands grabbed something softer than the other and Theresa stiffened in his arms and he was pretty sure that, make it through the current e
mergency or not, he was going to be killed very soon.

  "Leggo of me!" she shouted.

  "Fine!" He resisted the urge to keep hanging on – not to be creepy, but just to piss her off. "I'll let you shoot out the side next –"

  BOOM!

  The third explosion was the biggest, and Theresa fell back into his arms again. Thankfully he managed to put his hands into "safe zones" on her shoulders and stomach – he was pretty sure she'd just murder him outright if he made another mistake.

  He looked around. Finally saw the origin of the explosion: Buck. The big man had the tailgate of the Marauder open and was tossing out gas cans. They hit and cracked open. The zombies ran right through them, heedless of what they were doing.

  Buck had a handgun. He aimed. Fired.

  A fourth explosion.

  The flames leaped so high that Christopher could barely see through them. Then they died down and he saw the charred shapes of the zombies, still loping after them. Skin charred, clothes falling off.

  Still following. Things were indestruct –

  One of the zombies veered into the three or four at its side. Attacked them with undiluted rage. They went down.

  The action spread like a plague through the zombies. Every fourth or fifth one turned on its neighbors as the heat from the flames destroyed its head, cooked the receptors that were all that was left of its brain.

  The zombies devolved into a mass of flesh and bone, turned on itself by flame.

  Buck spun back toward the others. Spotted Christopher. "See?" he crowed. "You're not the only one who can make things blow up!"

  63

  Christopher helped Aaron free of the hole in the floor while Buck secured the gas cans that remained – only two, Christopher noted – and swung the tailgate closed.