Reckoning.2015.010.21

by Michaelbrent Collings

  He looked forward, then looked back. Watched the tunnel far enough ahead that he was confident of being able to proceed without falling, then turning and walking backward, focusing on the blackness behind him. Forward, back. Forward, back.

  The sound of the survivors' footfalls drifted away. Filtered by some part of his brain that was operating at peak levels. He only heard the silence that surrounded them like a soft blanket.

  And then something touched him. A tickle in his mind that was so light he couldn't be sure if it was sight, sound, smell… or some other sense as yet undefined but still strong in this darkly mystical place.

  It came again. Neither smell nor sight nor sound after all.

  "Stop!"

  The light ceased its motion as Aaron jerked to a halt almost before the word came from Christopher's mouth.

  "What is it?" said the cowboy.

  "Shut up. Everyone quiet."

  Everyone stopped moving. Christopher stood motionless as well, listening, looking, feeling.

  He moved to the side of the tunnel. Tilted his head toward it, listening.

  Then he touched the tunnel wall. As he did so, dirt cascaded from the ceiling above him. But he hadn't been the one to cause the grit and pebbles to dislodge.

  His hand tingled where it touched the wall. And a moment later he could hear what it was he had felt: the motion of the wall. Something beyond. Something in.

  Something coming closer.

  He screamed. "Move!"

  115

  The beam of the flashlight no longer waved in easy back-and-forth arcs. Now it wounded the darkness in long, thin gashes that closed the instant after they opened. Aaron tried to keep the beam steady for a few steps, then he abandoned the attempt and just ran.

  Maggie and Theresa ran the slowest, encumbered by their silent burdens. But no one ran ahead. Christopher knew that Aaron, Ken, and Amulek could have outdistanced the entire group if they wanted, but they held fast. Amulek was within arm's reach of Aaron, who kept reaching back to make sure he wasn't leaving Maggie behind. Theresa was almost abreast of Maggie, and Christopher kept pushing them both. Not exactly shoving, but urging them to move faster.

  Move. Move. Faster. FASTER.

  Ken was still ahead of the group. Not impossibly far, and he was pacing himself to match them. But he was staying far enough away that he wouldn't be caught by whatever effect Hope and Lizzy exerted on him. He kept looking back, and Christopher could see his eyes flash with concern, with fear, with rage.

  The sound that had been hinted at was now an actual presence. It rolled through the tunnel, a grinding noise that spoke of rocks crumbling, of boulders being chewed to pieces by alien teeth.

  Christopher looked back. The trickle of rocks and sand had become a flood. Piles accumulated on the floor.

  The side of the wall collapsed.

  Christopher saw them.

  116

  One time – and only once – Christopher experimented with drugs.

  It was with Heather, after she started using but before he understood the depth and breadth of her addiction.

  She gave him something to smoke. He thought at first it was weed, but there was none of the laid-back feeling he had expected. Weed, from what he understood, was a mellow drug that mostly imparted a general sense that everything would be all right, with the occasional ravenous need for Cheetos.

  This thing, whatever it was she gave him, came with a sudden euphoria that crashed over him and had him giggling by the third puff. A few hits later the euphoria shifted into something else. More intense, harder to describe. The colors in Heather's small apartment – dingier than he had remembered it, which should have been his first clue that something critical had changed inside her – suddenly seemed brighter. Things shifted in the corners of his vision, but when he turned to look at them straight on, there was nothing. Nothing but the shimmering lights that overtook his sight.

  Then he could feel the colors. He could smell the red, could hear the call of the silver shades that flashed off her refrigerator. Sight, sound, touch, taste… it all blended together in a whole that was both bright and dark, all things captured in the oneness of that room.

  He kissed Heather. They had sex – he remembered it as an animal thing. Little of the tenderness that had always marked the times he and Heather made love. It was both hot in its frantic need and cold for the distance he felt between them.

  That was when Carina was conceived.

  When they finished, he looked at her. And though she was unmoving – she had taken much more of the drug than he had, and after sex had retreated into a stupor – her features seemed to ripple.

  Suddenly, he wasn't looking at Heather. He was looking at a thing. Dark tentacles seemed to sprout from the shadows below her chin, from the black hollows of her eyes.

  He screamed. Screamed more when the tentacles joined and became writhing snakes, reaching toward him, biting at him.

  She turned her head, and her eyes were insane. Coal pits that heated the depths of Hell.

  The snakes bit him. Slashed at his face and he couldn't even lift his hands to protect his flesh from their venom.

  With every bite, Heather changed a bit more. Grew more alien. Eyes fell away, replaced by scales. Then the scales dropped off and there was only a distant nothingness. Her skin shifted and became rubbery, like she was a thing that wore a Heather mask. A costume unwelcome on even the darkest of Halloweens.

  His screams continued. The tentacles bit. He fell into darkness, and still he saw her, saw the thing she had become. He was surrounded by nothing, a lone body floating in a void with only a damned creature for company.

  They fought when he came back to himself. He demanded to know what she had given him. She told him it didn't matter. Asked him to "ride the merry-go-round again" with her. He said no. Shouted it. Asked how long she had been doing it and begged her to stop and told her he loved her in words that were false in that moment, because every time she opened her mouth he saw what had sprung from it in his vision; every time she shook her head he remembered the shadows gathering and sprouting long tentacles that shifted to biting vipers.

  He left. And it took a long time to remember that he had loved her. Hours before he could see anything in his mind other than the vision of what he understood was the face she now preferred.

  It was the ugliest thing he had ever seen. Not even the zombies, with the terror he felt whenever they were near, could match the sheer repulsiveness of that day.

  Now, though, in the dark of the tunnel, he finally saw something the match of what he had seen in Heather's apartment, in the face he glimpsed after doing the drugs with her.

  The diggers. Lumpy lengths of dark flesh covered by whirring drill bits and spinning saws. They had always been fearful, but now, in the dark of their preferred environment, with splashes of Aaron's flashlight catching their bodies and creating shifting shadows that obscured and allowed imagination to run rampant, they were even more revolting. Even uglier and more ferocious.

  They glistened, and Christopher realized that they were covered with a film of mucus – probably the zombies' yellow all-purpose ooze – that would allow them to slide more easily through the earth's bowels.

  They fell into the tunnel. Some pushing in from the sides, others dropping in from the ceiling in long, viscous ovoids that seemed to pool in boneless masses before they straightened and reached for the survivors.

  117

  The scrabble of shoes and boots on rock sounded loudly as the survivors ran. And for a moment Christopher felt a thread of hope. The diggers were slow when moving across the earth, rather than through it. They reached for the group, but all of them ran faster than the creatures could.

  We're going to make it.

  Then the growl came.

  Give up. Give in.

  More dirt rained down.

  The first zombie – not a digger, but one of the ones that owned the world above – pushed through the tunnel a digger had ju
st left.

  It oriented on the survivors. Opened its mouth. Chirped. Growled.

  Give up.

  More zombies pushed into the tunnel.

  Give in.

  Christopher screamed. "Faster! Go, go faster!"

  The survivors picked up the pace as the creatures began to follow.

  Fast. They're so fast.

  We're not going to make it.

  The run was an insane fog. Aaron's light bobbled back and forth, first scanning the tunnel ahead, then whipping back as he looked over his shoulder to see what followed, how close the predators had drawn.

  Every time he did, Christopher looked back as well. And every time, he wished he hadn't. The zombies were closer each time. Their growl –

  (give UP give IN)

  – sounded like a chorus of snarls, the creatures a choir of demons. The voice a shriek in his mind as well as in his ears. More so.

  He saw Ken ahead. He was pointing up, at an angle.

  "Go there!" screamed Ken.

  Christopher didn't understand what Ken was pointing at. Then he drew nearer, and saw it: a dark hole in the ceiling above. Not nearly as large as the tunnel they were in: it was only about five feet in circumference.

  Amulek got there first, and turned immediately around, making a holster with his hands. Aaron leaped into it, dropping the flashlight as Amulek launched him upward, over the lip of the hole that Christopher now saw didn't go straight up – it was angled. Steep, heading the direction they had already been going, but moving upward as well. Held together by masses of yellow, hardened to a shell that kept the tunnel impossibly open instead of collapsing as it should have done.

  Aaron's hands appeared at the lip of the tunnel. He reached down as Maggie got to Amulek. She passed Lizzy up to him. He disappeared, then moved back into view.

  Christopher saw Ken moving farther down the tunnel. Not very far, he clearly just wanted to stay away from Lizzy and Hope.

  What happens if he does get too close?

  (GIVE UP. GIVE IN.)

  (the king calls….)

  Theresa pushed Hope upward. Then helped Maggie into the tunnel. The redhead followed, disappearing above. Christopher drew even with Amulek. The teen was still waiting, hands together.

  Christopher shook his head. "You go."

  The teen's eyes narrowed. He shook his own head.

  "This isn't the time to argue! Get the hell out of here!" Christopher jerked him close. "Protect them."

  Amulek paused a half-second more, then nodded. He put a foot into the cradle of Christopher's hands. Leaped. Caught the tunnel's edge. Disappeared from sight.

  Aaron looked down at Christopher from above. Reached out his hand. Christopher scooped up the flashlight from where it lay on the floor. Shoved it in his pants pocket.

  He jumped.

  And couldn't reach.

  118

  His heart felt like it had dropped into his stomach. At first that was despair. Fear. The terror of being trapped, yet again. He knew he could run forward – but that would just prolong the inevitable, and would leave him alone in this forbidden place.

  He couldn't do that.

  He couldn't leave his family. Not again.

  In the next moment the sensation was less psychic and more physical as something shoved him upward.

  Ken.

  Apparently his daughters – if they still were his daughters, and if he was still their father – had moved far enough away that he could resist their call. He had rushed forward and put one hand into Christopher's armpit, grabbed the seat of his pants with the other.

  And then Ken launched him upward with the same unnerving strength the zombies possessed. Maybe more.

  Aaron caught Christopher's hands, but it was a sloppy catch. Christopher found himself turning as he hung, like a living mobile over the strangest crib ever crafted.

  Aaron grunted above him, and Christopher began rising toward the tunnel, one painful inch at a time.

  He kept spinning.

  Saw Ken.

  His friend roared as he threw himself into the first zombies that had made it this far down the tunnel. They evaporated under his attack. One moment there were the two creatures, the next instant they were a spray of ichor and a misshapen pile of twitching pieces.

  Ken moved to the next zombies.

  Christopher started to think this was a fight they might actually win.

  The dirt below Ken crumbled. The sawblades of the diggers thrashed their way through the earth below him. Teeth and blades drilled their way into his feet. Blood spewed from Ken's legs. He screamed. The scream had pain in it, but it was mostly rage. The shriek of something great and powerful dragged down by motes in a sunbeam.

  The drills bit into his shins. His legs. Chewing them up so fully and completely that nothing was left. Just wet strings of flesh hanging from the diggers' limbs and bodies and faces.

  Ken turned in place. He saw Christopher still hanging there. "Move," he snarled. Then spun back to face the two zombies that reached for him.

  The diggers' bodies spun and spat.

  The zombies reached Ken.

  Ken screamed. He lashed out with hands that had grown blades, with arms that had sprouted sharpened ridges.

  He slashed down. One of the diggers split in half.

  Then Ken fell.

  Another one of them… lost.

  And Christopher was finally pulled up into the tunnel above.

  "Come on," Aaron said.

  "Ken –"

  "I know. Shut up. Move."

  Aaron rolled his eyes as he said it, a gesture that made Christopher look past the cowboy. He could see Maggie down the tunnel. Her eyes seemed to reflect the gleam of the flashlight that shone from Christopher's pocket.

  She looked terrified. Not just for life and limb but for love lost and found again.

  Christopher looked at Aaron again. Saw the unspoken request in the other man's eyes.

  He nodded minutely. Knowing that Maggie would never move from here. Not without Ken.

  And that meant he had only one choice.

  "He's right behind me," said Christopher, "but he can't come up until we're farther away." He looked at Maggie as he said it, trying to keep his expression from cracking as he lied to a friend. "He's coming."

  She remained frozen for a moment. Then turned and picked up Lizzy from the floor of the tunnel. She couldn't stand up, but there was room for her to hunch over and hold the girl in her arms.

  She began moving forward. Theresa picked up Hope. Amulek followed – there was no room to change positions in this place.

  Aaron held Christopher's upper arm for a moment: You did the right thing.

  Christopher nodded. And knew he was lying again. The first lie to Maggie, the second one to himself.

  I had to do it.

  No. You left him. You left your family again. You let them down.

  Yes. I guess I did.

  He moved forward. Still hearing the echoes of Ken's last screams below.

  119

  They walked, a hunched-over walk that had Christopher's back aching inside of seconds. He heard grunts from ahead and knew the others felt the same way. Pain, then more pain as the tunnel narrowed and they were forced lower.

  All he could really see ahead of him was Aaron, carrying the light that he presumed illuminated the tunnel ahead. But it was only a presumption – he could barely see his own feet below, could barely guess at where they were headed.

  Nowhere good. Fate or God or whoever was in charge now hadn't let them off easy before, so he doubted things would change now.

  Christopher shuddered, walking in the near-dark in a tunnel that could lead anywhere or nowhere.

  He was panting. At first with the effort of the walk, his strained posture. Then he realized that his legs were burning. His calves, tingled and then burned with the effort of traveling uphill in a hunched-over position.

  And then he heard a noise. The slough of dirt, the scrape of feet o
ver a strange mix of dirt and waxy yellow.

  Give UP. Give IN.

  He heard it in his mind, then heard it with his ears.

  He looked behind him.

  Saw nothing.

  But knew they had found their way into the tunnel. They were on the trail again.

  They were coming.

  "We gotta get going!" he shouted. And knew they couldn't move faster. Not hunched over like this, not with two of them carrying limp burdens with nascent queens.

  (I call.)

  The king's voice sounded in his mind.

  "Move," he said again. But it was a whisper this time. A voice without hope.

  The zombies came, and he heard their call and trembled.

  120

  Once the initial panic left him, Christopher experienced a strange calm. Then the calm shifted again and terror reclaimed him. Closed around him until it was tighter than the tunnel.

  It was hard to breathe. Getting even harder with every step. His back hurt. He could hear little over the rasping gasps that came from him and that floated back from those ahead.

  The light seemed dimmer. Not weaker, not like it was running out of batteries. More like the entire world was darkening.

  I've let them down.

  On one level he was aware of the ridiculous nature of the thought. Aware that he wasn't responsible for the survival of the others.

  But he remembered Derek. Remembered a little boy rocketing down the side of a tilted crane. Attacking a six-foot-tall-plus zombie, a blackened beast with flesh burned away on one side, the other whole and unburnt and somehow all the more horrible for that fact.

  He remembered the boy, screaming as he took the bite intended for Maggie. Falling away. Turning to one of the creatures, toppling to what he must have thought in his final moments was his doom.

  The boy never faltered. Never hesitated. He just did, and so saved lives.

  Christopher suddenly stopped. A moment later the dancing light in Aaron's hand swung around to find him.