Reckoning.2015.010.21

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Christopher kept nudging toward the hole as Aaron pushed himself in and down, in and down. Christopher loosened his grasp slightly, his hands no longer holding onto Aaron's belt – it was out of reach – but to his thighs, then his shins.

  He was sprawled out, lying flat with Theresa practically on top of him. And he could see.

  The zombie that had started climbing out met Aaron halfway down the tunnel. Christopher wanted to scream, to cry out and ask why his friend had decided on this strange way to commit suicide.

  Aaron moved.

  The motion was so fast that Christopher almost couldn't see it. Just a blur of quick motion, the flash of something catching the light for the barest fraction of an instant.

  The zombie jerked. Christopher thought for an instant that the thing was one of those that had strange, black growths all over their bodies. Then he saw that what he had taken for a dark outcropping of bone covering the thing's eye wasn't another evolution in the things' fearsome appearance.

  It was the hilt of Aaron's knife.

  "Pull me up!" shouted the cowboy. Christopher gritted his teeth and started wiggling backward. But not fast. And not before he saw the zombie that Aaron had stabbed throw its head back and howl. It began to jitter, the motion spastic and strange, and in doing so it lost its grip on the tunnel. It fell.

  It crashed into the darkness below. Christopher couldn't make out any details, but the growl –

  (GIVE UP. GIVE –)

  – suddenly disappeared, replaced by screams of rage, by movement that hinted at confined mayhem.

  He pulled Aaron the rest of the way up. The cowboy exhaled when he finally came back into the daylight, a powerful release of breath held too long.

  No time to rest, though. Aaron rolled right over to his stomach. Pushed himself up. So did Christopher.

  Theresa stood nearby, Lizzy in her hands, looking frightened as she wheeled around to take in their surroundings.

  Christopher was glad to see the toddler had her eyes closed again. Though he thought he detected rage in the set of her small face. He didn't know if that meant they had won this particular battle, or if she was just angry that they had tried to thwart her plans. He supposed it didn't matter.

  It's not like they can try any harder to kill us.

  Christopher spun in a quick circle. Looking around. Looking for somewhere to run, for somewhere to hide.

  Finding neither.

  130

  They had come up in the middle of a field.

  It didn't appear to have anything in it, just a never-ending field of brown dirt that extended into a grove of trees that bordered it on three sides. The fourth side ended at a field of some kind of grain – wheat, perhaps barley.

  "Where now?" asked Theresa. She wheeled around, taking a few steps in one direction, then backpedaling and spinning to face the opposite way.

  "Damned if I know." Aaron squinted into the sky, and Christopher figured he was probably getting his bearings by calculating his average shadow length divided by his stride length and taking into account the average size of his balls of steel.

  Maggie just held to Hope. Cradled the child as close to her breast as she could, her mouth moving silently in a way that disquieted Christopher.

  The sounds kept coming from the hole they had come out of. Grunts, groans, chitters. Something very bad was going on down there, and it was only a matter of time before it came for them.

  Amulek was the only one who didn't seem lost. He walked toward the grove of trees with the sure step of someone who expects to be followed.

  Christopher did just that. Fell into step behind the teen. Within five feet, Aaron was following as well. Both of them knowing that the others would come, too. Both of them understanding that when someone like Amulek began walking, he knew – always knew – that where he was going was a better place to be.

  Christopher looked back. Theresa was still wheeling around. Maggie was still hunched over her child. Christopher opened his mouth to call them over.

  The words died before they fully formed in his mind.

  Hope's eyes were open. Staring. Looking old and cunning and out of place on a little girl's face – just like Lizzy's had looked just moments before.

  The little girl smiled.

  And Christopher knew what was going to happen. Knew the mistake he had made.

  "No," he whispered.

  131

  He spun around mid-stride. Inertia kept his body shifting forward, moving away from what he had seen for a few critical milliseconds. Long enough for the smile on Hope's face to shift from malicious glee to pure rage.

  Maggie shrieked. She dropped Hope unceremoniously on the ground. Clapped her hands to the sides of her head as Hope fell to earth. Screamed again.

  "Get out, get out!" she shrieked. And Christopher knew who – what – she was screaming at. Because he felt it, too.

  Mine. Mine now. All MINE.

  The voice in his mind was one of the queens. The thing inside Hope.

  Hope fell from Maggie's arms, landing in a catlike stance on the thick soil. The little girl didn't hesitate. Just bared her teeth and ran straight for Theresa. The redhead barely had time to shout before Hope flew into her legs.

  But the attack wasn't against her.

  Hope scampered up Theresa's right leg, climbing it with the jerky, agile movements of a spider. Then she was level with what she wanted. Not Theresa – the woman was just something in the way, something between Hope and her intended target.

  Christopher saw Lizzy's eyes open. They weren't glassy, weren't confused. They gleamed with malevolence. Wrath.

  Fear.

  Christopher ran at Maggie. At Hope. At Lizzy. Only a few steps.

  Just a few steps. I can make it.

  (MINE. DIE.)

  Hope made a thin, mewling noise – a keen that reminded Christopher of the call of a wolf, a cry to mate or hunt or feed. That was when Lizzy screamed: a sound far too powerful to have come from such a small body.

  Christopher was still running.

  Just a few steps.

  Theresa didn't know what was going on. Her body curved away from Hope, not like she was afraid of the girl but more as though she couldn't understand what was happening and simply wanted to take a step back so she could get a better view of events.

  Hope was holding to Theresa's body armor with her right hand. Her left now curled, the fingers angled like talons. She raked down with them, and a trio of bright red lines appeared on Lizzy's chest.

  Lizzy screamed.

  (You DARE. KILL YOU.)

  And Hope answered with a scream of her own.

  (Mine. Die. MINE, ALL MINE.)

  The screams were loud, louder than any child or toddler had a right to produce. But it wasn't the screams that staggered Christopher in place. It was the rage, the twisted knowledge, the cunning and guile that were packed into the shrieks that bored into his mind.

  Maggie was still shrieking, too. Still had hands to her head. Christopher remembered that the first time the two queens had attacked each other, it had been through Sally and Buck. The snow leopard had faced off against the big contractor as champions for the queens. Willing to kill or die on their command.

  But Maggie hadn't joined in the fight. Maybe it was because whatever happened to the others in the top of the Wells Fargo building hadn't had time to take. Maybe she was too old for it to work.

  Maybe she resisted simply because she was a mother, and wouldn't take sides against either daughter – or both of them.

  No matter what, she had resisted, and Christopher could see she was resisting now. Digging in her heels against the call of the queens. He thought maybe he and the rest of them were only getting an echo of their screams. Thought maybe Maggie was getting it all. Because they were still her children – what remained of them after Derek had –

  (Changed)

  – gone.

  Maggie's body went rigid. Fighting against the queens, against her children, aga
inst herself.

  That fight was going to decide the outcome. Not directly – Christopher didn't think Maggie was going to give in to any urge Hope might be sending her way – but she was too busy struggling against whatever pulled her to intervene.

  And that meant Hope was going to kill her sister.

  Lizzy's eyes widened. Terror finally winning over wrath. Hope's jaws drew farther apart. She leaned toward the toddler's face.

  Toward Lizzy's throat.

  Christopher pushed himself to move faster. To get to the girls in time.

  He was going to fail.

  Lizzy raised her arms. Small arms, hands that should playing with blocks, with cars and dolls and the childish things that had died in the Change, just like so much else. The hands pressed out, pressed against Hope.

  Hope laughed.

  Then clamped her teeth down on Lizzy's throat.

  132

  A flurry of images pummeled Christopher.

  The first time he saw Carina. He noticed her toes right off the bat. Perfect little toes that had never touched the earth. The feet of an angel that hadn't quite finished her descent from Heaven.

  Lizzy. Sleeping against Sally's stomach – the predator now a protector, the child smiling an innocent smile that somehow made the stilled savagery of the beast make sense.

  The first time he saw Heather. Smiling. Laughing. Beautiful.

  All gone.

  Carina had become a thing with blades for a mouth, a saw-toothed monster that could chew through steel. Heather had become an addict, a shade of what she had once been. Lizzy – no longer even remotely related to the child she should have remained.

  The images superimposed themselves over what he now saw. The then of yesterdays falling across the now of a today he never could have conceived.

  Christopher ran toward the girls, but he knew he was too far to do anything about it. Too far to stop Hope from biting down. Too far to reach her before she tore out her sister's throat.

  But close enough to see. Incapable of changing anything, only there to watch.

  He had gone through life watching. Watching his family fall apart, watching everything he held dear disappear.

  A line of blood appeared around Hope's mouth as her teeth broke Lizzy's skin.

  Lizzy screamed – a terrible, final scream.

  And then…

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  … the world…

  … just…

  … stopped.

  Christopher was still running, still reaching out. Aaron and Amulek, he realized, were beside him, their own hands reaching for the gruesome murder happening right before their eyes.

  But still. But still….

  For all that motion, for all that sound and fury, the world seemed to have ground to a sudden halt. The earth might as well have spun right off its axis when the Change came… but it was still spinning. Now, though, there was a change. Christopher sensed it before he understood it. Knew it before he could explain it.

  Something drew near, and everything else stopped in awe.

  He stopped running. Whatever was happening, it slowed his steps, brought him to a halt.

  She's not dead.

  The thought bounced through his mind, ricocheted around a brain already nearly undone by the events of past days. He didn't understand it. Not even when he heard it again.

  She's not dead.

  The third time, though, he did understand.

  She's not dead.

  He was staring at Lizzy. Staring at a little girl whose life had been counted in milliseconds.

  She was staring back. Not dead. Blood still ran in a thin stream down her neck, then spread in a lopsided triangle across her bare chest. But she was breathing. Her eyes open.

  Why isn't she dead?

  Lizzy wasn't moving. Neither was Hope, who still had her teeth clamped around her once-sister's throat. A quick yank and the battle between them could be over. Just a few more centimeters of motion.

  But Hope was frozen. Then, slowly, her jaw loosened and she straightened. She still clung to Lizzy, to Theresa –

  (No one's screaming anymore, what's going on?)

  – but whatever had pushed her to murder was gone.

  No. Not gone. Just… stopped.

  Christopher could still see the rage in the little girl's eyes. Lizzy's.

  What's going on?

  The world's stopped.

  Christopher felt a hand on his shoulder. Aaron. He didn't seem to know he was doing it – just an automatic action, an instinctive move in the face of….

  Christopher saw what the other man saw.

  The world's stopped.

  "Dear God," he said. It was a prayer.

  Or perhaps a goodbye.

  134

  Christopher had seen the creatures move in mobs before. Small ones at first, then they gathered in greater and greater numbers until it was impossible to look at any one of them. All that could be seen was a teeming, swarming mass – a single thing, a creature with a hundred thousand angry eyes, bent on the destruction of the last dregs of humanity.

  He had seen the things – the thing, that single thing they had become – climbing up walls. Coating the sides of buildings, making high rises tremble under its sheer weight. It had been a terror, an atrocity: to see what people had made as monuments to their own achievement, all unmade in moments.

  But as bad as that had been, as horrifying and just wrong… what Christopher now saw was worse. Less violent – almost peaceful. But the peace was a lie, and the lie perverted the very air around him; made it thick and foul.

  The field the survivors stood in was ringed by trees on three sides. And it seemed for a moment as though the trees themselves were moving. Shadows danced and writhed in the depth of the forested area. Tree limbs seemed to tear away from trunks, then shift toward the light that demarked the end of the forest and the beginning of the field.

  The trees danced. Then the dancing could be seen for what it truly was. No longer the trees, but the things in their midst.

  The first zombie stepped into the field. Its movements were marked by the fluidity and grace the things achieved whenever they were close to large numbers of other zombies.

  It did not growl. It was silent.

  The silence was part of what Christopher had felt earlier. A quiet that had fallen over Lizzy and Hope, then Maggie, and now the whole world. No birds, no sighing of water or soughing of wind. Christopher couldn't even hear his own breath.

  Just… nothing.

  The zombie was joined by another, and a third. Sliding, gliding steps into the field. Then there were ten, and fifty.

  A hundred.

  Christopher shifted slightly. Saw the creatures emerging from the trees on all three sides.

  Five hundred.

  A thousand.

  He spun, and saw more of them behind, rising into view as they crested a small hill behind the barley field that was the fourth boundary behind the survivors.

  So many.

  So quiet.

  "What's happening?" said a voice. Christopher couldn't tell if it was Aaron or Theresa or maybe even him. The voice was a whisper, a sigh of near-awe.

  The creatures walked forward. Still silent, which was not just strange but terrifying on some primal level. The zombies had always vocalized. Chittering, rasping, and of course there was always that growl. That call.

  Christopher had seen zombies that were silent like this before – the ones that had risen in the bodies of men and women already dead. Those undead creatures had been silent, too.

  But these things that surrounded them… these were the living creatures. The people who had Changed while their hearts still beat. Always angry, always screaming in his mind

  They came in silence, more and more of them entering the field.

  "What's happening?"

  This time Christopher placed the voice. Theresa.

  "I don't –" he started.

  The voice cut him off. A voice that sound
ed in his mind, a voice he had heard before.

  DIE. DIE AND BE REBORN AND LIVE FOREVER IN ME.

  The king.

  Christopher looked around, expecting to see Derek's small body somewhere near, at the front of the zombies that walked toward the survivors.

  He wasn't there.

  But someone else was.

  "Ken," he said.

  "Where?" Aaron said.

  Christopher pointed. Someone sobbed.

  This time he was pretty sure it had been him.

  135

  The mass of zombies stretched around them, an unbroken circle that stretched into the darkness of the forest and over the hill beyond the barley field. A swaying, synchronized mass of creatures that had been melded into one single organism by the overriding will of the king.

  DIE. DIE AND BE REBORN AND LIVE FOREVER IN ME.

  The sound was louder by far than any Christopher had yet heard in his mind. But at the same time, it was subtle, careful – a screaming caress, if such a thing were even possible.

  No. Not possible.

  None of this is possible. We've fallen off a tilted planet, fallen into the deep dark of madness.

  Totes cray-cray.

  The thoughts swirled in his mind, and he recognized in a small part of himself that they were trying to cover up panic, a fear so great it would completely consume him.

  He tried to hold onto hope. But it was Ken who undid that. Ken, who had survived so much, and even after death had come back to protect them all, to save them all.

  And now… now Ken was gone.

  Oh, his body was still there, but whatever had made him a friend, a person who wasn't just loyal or kind, but actually good, was gone. The fluidity, the grace, the way he walked in perfect lockstep with the rest of –

  (the organism, the one thing, the king)

  – the rest of the creatures: these marked what had happened more clearly than if he had appeared with "I am one of THEM" branded across his broadened chest.