Out stepped one more. One more nightmare, one more surprise.
Mo.
The Māori warrior must have been bitten soon after the group left him. And suddenly Christopher wondered if the zombies hadn't been keeping the truck moving slowly to prevent escape. He thought perhaps it was to allow the old man that had been so wonderful and was now just a skin worn by evil to run ahead. To be here, to show them all… this.
Aaron had posited that some of what the zombies did was psychological as well as physical torture. This was proof he had been right. Christopher suddenly feared not only for his body, for the loss of his mind, but for the entirety of his soul. He was peering at damnation: an infinity of being forced to do what should never be done; not a loss of self, but a loss of all free will.
This was what the king wanted them to know, wanted them to see –
YOU HAVE LOST ALL. ALL IS MINE. ALL IS FOR ME TO POSSES. DEVOUR.
DEVOUR.
DEVOUR.
DEVOUR.
I COME.
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The door the other creatures had come out of was still open. Even so, Christopher got the impression of it opening again. A curtain drawing aside to reveal the newest player on this stage.
The king.
It was still Derek. Still the frame and form of a boy. But anyone who had an IQ over six would have been able to see that this wasn't a mere child. A single look in his eyes was enough to scare any impression of youth screaming away.
The king wore a smile. But it was as unnatural and unnerving as the look in his eyes. It was open so wide it extended past the limits of a human jaw. The lips were drawn so tight they were nothing but bloodless lines on a face stretched parchment-thin. They curved up so high they nearly touched the once-boy's – the new-king's – earlobes. The teeth gleamed in the light, small and perfect the way only the teeth of a child can be.
The smile, that rictus of death and madness, never waned as the king turned his small head, looking at each person in the group in turn. Amulek took a half step back when the king focused his gaze on him, like the look was a physical assault. Theresa shuddered when it came her turn, her body shaking so hard Christopher could feel the vibration against his arm. Christopher himself felt like vomiting, and he heard Aaron issue that coughing gag, the sound of a man trying to hold his faculties, physical and mental, in check.
When the king looked at Maggie, she just moaned and sobbed a single, hitching retch of a cry.
The king's smile grew wider when he heard the sound.
His eyes turned back to the center of the group. Christopher steeled himself to receive the brunt of the stare. But the king's eyes didn't fall on him. They moved instead to what he held, sliding over Hope's shape and then looking at Lizzy.
The girls wore smiles that mirrored that of the king. Too wide, too many teeth. Crescent moons that slashed through the dark sky of their expressions.
Hope started shifting in Christopher's arms. Writhing. And he realized that what he felt wasn't just the movement of a child struggling to be set down. It was a rippling. Skin changing in his hands. Bone and muscle shifting, flesh turning to gel and then hardening in all the wrong places.
He didn't look.
COME.
The call was no longer directed at the survivors. Christopher felt it surge around him like a hot stream, but the center was not his to feel. It was directed at Lizzy and Hope. At the queens.
Hope fell away from Christopher's arms. One moment he had her, the next she had slid from his grasp the way a slug might slide from his fingers. Feet and hands touched down on the pavement, but even that sound was wrong. Firm hands turned to fleshy pads, then to something else, more primal and alien to any universe in which Christopher cared to exist.
He wanted to look away. Away from the king, away from the children. Couldn't. He was frozen. The terror of the moment and the sheer force of the king overpowered him.
He had been close to the king before. But that had been earlier. A king still growing, still coming into his own.
Now… this was the King, and the King would not be denied.
(hope)
The voice that had sounded in his mind was fading. And suddenly Christopher wondered if he had misinterpreted the word all this time. Wondered if whatever was behind it wasn't counseling hope, but was instead trying to convince itself there was any reason for that hope at all.
Great. We've followed a pep talk. And it wasn't even for us.
(hope)
The word/feeling was almost gone.
The King smiled wider. Bones shifted and crackled.
COME.
COME.
The two things that had once been children stepped forward. As they did, there was the humming buzz of great wings, and Ken dropped to earth. He gathered the things up in his arms. Walked toward the King with a stride that grew steadily more fluid as his body flowed around that of the girls.
A moment later, the line of the survivors broke. Maggie stepped forward.
She, too, followed the call of the King.
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Christopher wanted to stop Maggie from moving forward. Wanted to scream at her and beg her to stay with them, stay with the survivors, stay with what was left of her sanity. But he was still held fast by a combination of fear and the simple presence of the King. Not an earthly monarch, nothing so mean or so simple as that. This was a thing that had conquered worlds. That had eaten universes, and would continue to consume still more until all were undone and all were him.
The one moment Christopher tried to move, to will his limbs forward, the King looked at him. Any thought of movement faded. There was only trembling, shivering in terror before darkness incarnate.
YOU RESISTED ME. YOU KILLED MY FAMILY. YOU WILL SUFFER.
Christopher didn't understand what the King's thoughts meant. As far as he knew, the queens were here – and as though in a monarchical retinue, Maggie and Ken added the presence of a royal father, a royal mother.
The King's thoughts brushed his mind. Brought images of Buck and of Buck's mother. Buck's mother had been killed by Aaron – an act of mercy when she was mortally injured. Buck had been ground to nothing by the rock crusher at the quarry.
THEY WERE MINE.
And Christopher understood: like Maggie and the children, Buck and his mother had been claimed by the King. They had worn swaddling clothes of alien silk, encircled and changed into something different that would have taken them to the King in his own due time.
MINE. BUT LOST TO ME AND MINE NO MORE.
YOU. WILL. SUFFER.
Christopher fell to his knees, bent under the wrath and hatred of the King. Theresa tumbled forward at the same time. A moment later so did Amulek and Aaron – the proud warriors the last to bow down before what stood before them.
But they did bow.
YOU ALL WILL SUFFER.
The King turned its gaze from them. Looked upon Ken, who was almost to the base of the building, still holding bundles that shifted in his grasp.
The King's arms opened wide.
MINE.
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The King touched the things – no longer children – in Ken's arms.
And became one with them.
THIS IS MY BODY. MY SELF. AND MY SELF IS ALL.
The King's small arms flowed. They became rubbery, the distorted echo of human limbs. The hands melded with the little girls, who were themselves barely more than gelatinous lumps in Ken's arms.
They still had faces, though. Christopher could see them, features blasphemed by the enormous grins. The grins kept widening. Widening.
The King leaned forward. The entirety of his flesh flowed toward the queens.
Ken bowed over. He, too, started to melt into the mass. And a moment later Maggie touched them. Hands on her once-husband's shoulders. Flesh dripping as she turned from One into Many, and a Many that would once again be One.
Christopher tried to scream. Nothing came. He could barely breathe. He hea
rd Theresa crying beside him, a strange sound that seemed to be a never-ending series of exhalations without any inhalations to even it out. Like she was gasping out her last breath in a series of wretched sobs.
The warriors – Aaron and Amulek – sighed as though struggling to lift some great weight.
I. AM. ALL.
Christopher tried not to watch. But he felt his chin tilt up, felt his eyes focus on the sight of a family he had loved disappearing into the King. He was being controlled, made to watch. This was the King's doing, forcing him to look at the moment when all ended, when the battle was lost forever.
Then the real suffering would begin. Not merely friends and family lost, but something much more horrible found in an intimacy that would last for all time.
The features of Ken, Maggie, Derek, Lizzy, and Hope began their final dissolution. There was almost nothing human left of them. Less and less and less and then almost gone.
And the voice – that other voice – spoke again.
148
(hope)
(Hope.)
(HOPE.)
The feeling grew in Christopher's mind, the voice sounded louder and stronger until it was nearly the match of the King.
The many-bodied mass that writhed in the street pulsed. Not the same fluid writhing that had marked its movements before, this was less coordinated. This was a jerky wave that ran through its form.
MINE. MINE. EVERYTHING AND ALL AND ONE IN ME.
(NO.)
The voice was nearly as loud as the King's. So loud in Christopher's mind it now had tone, timbre. He recognized it.
It was Derek.
Not the voice of the creature Derek had become, the King… this was the voice of the child who had given himself to save his mother, to save the survivors.
Christopher suddenly thought of Ken. Of a man who had never given up, and who had found a way even to come back from a strange kind of death. He wondered if Ken had heard this voice. If it had kept him going; given him hope.
He thought so. Then knew so. Knew it in the way that we know the sun will be in the sky each morning; that the world will wake after sleeping.
That life will go on.
NO. MINE. MINE. MINE.
(NO.)
The mass pulsed before Christopher again. But the wave that ran through it was smaller this time. As though whatever fought the King for control was losing.
MINE. MINE. MINE.
(No.)
The King sounded louder, his voice pressing Christopher's mind so hard he felt parts of it fold into oblivion. Blood flowed from his nose, trickled from his ears.
Derek's voice faded under the King's onslaught. Faded as his features continued to disappear.
ALL IS MINE.
(no)
(no)
The King turned what was left of its features toward Christopher. The smile widened.
MINE.
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(hope)
Christopher heard Derek's voice. A last gasp, a last resistance to whatever had him. And knew it wouldn't be enough. The boy would be buried forever, would disappear into the King.
(hope)
The ripple rolled across the King's surface again. This time Christopher found the strength to gasp, surprise wrenching the sound from him, defying the silence that surrounded them.
(hope)
He felt the word in his mind. But it was different this time. It wasn't Derek's voice, it was the declaration of another. A second rebel in the small resistance.
It was Ken. Lost but not gone – not entirely. And now speaking as he joined his voice with that of his son.
(Hope, said Ken in Christopher's mind.
And then another voice: Hope, it said. It was Maggie.
And still another: Hope, said the third voice, and this time the word was spoken by the child who bore it as her namesake.
A final voice, speaking even in his mind with the subtle susurration of a newly speaking toddler: Hope.)
The King screamed. A shriek that punched new holes in Christopher's mind, and also sounded too loud in his ears as the wail came from all five mouths the King now possessed: the physical forms that remained of Ken's family.
MINE.
(No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Each of the family spoke defiance. Each resisted. Then all spoke as one.
NO.)
I WILL HAVE YOU.
(WE WILL NOT HAVE YOU.)
And everything changed.
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No silence, nothing Christopher had ever experienced, could compare to the funereal pause of that moment. Not even the earlier silence that signaled the approach of millions of zombies in a field.
Here, life itself seemed to halt, and he wouldn't have been surprised to see a bird hanging, its wings mid-flap, motionless in the air.
The King broke the still. He moved. The pulse that had shaken his mass before ran through him again. Again. Over and over until it was an overlapping series of waves, then even faster until the great surface of the King's misshapen body became a blur.
The zombies that surrounded them – that surrounded the survivors, that stood in masses on every street and clung to every vertical surface – began to shake. None of them moved from the places they occupied, but Christopher could feel them under his feet as their shaking transmitted to the ground beneath him. There were creaks and sounds of shattering stone all around as the buildings began to fail under the tremors of the hundreds of thousands of things that coated each.
No.
Now it was the King's voice that sounded weaker.
(YES.)
no.
(YES.)
no
(YES, said Ken.
YES, said Maggie.
YES, said Hope.
YES, said Lizzy.
And, last of all, and strongest, Derek: YES.)
The King screamed, a final scream that had faded to a whisper of its once-self.
His will was not as great as theirs.
i am one.
The whisper of defiance, rage, fear, and the pique of a spoiled child.
i. am. one…
And that, Christopher knew, was his undoing. He was one, standing against a family he had willingly taken into himself. A family that was willing to die for each other, to do anything for any who needed it.
He was one. They were many.
He took a family, and now the King bent under their will.
As the King failed, Christopher found strength. One moment he was on bended knee, and the next he was standing in the face of the creature.
A King no longer, but instead a deposed monarch, a monster running for its life.
i will hate you
It was a final thought, small and weak. Another thought followed it, coming from the same physical center but as different as sun and moon.
(YOUR HATE DOESN’T MATTER, said Ken.)
The king left.
Ken's face, still joined to a body that had become one with the bodies of his family, turned to Christopher. It smiled. The smile was as lopsided and misshapen as the rest of him, drooping far beyond what the bones should have allowed. But the ugliness went only as far as the physical shape. There was no more malice in his friend's eyes. They had returned to their proper selves.
(Thank you. For all you've done for my family.)
Christopher heard it clearly. Knew the others did, too. Knew this was more than a thanks, it was –
(Goodbye.)
Ken toppled forward, into his family. They crumpled with him. As they did, they completed their transformation to a single mass. Then the dissolution continued, and soon there was nothing of the body/bodies, just a large wet patch on the sidewalk. Then even that seemed to dry, to evaporate.
And gone.
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It wasn't over.
The huge creature – the thing of darkness and light, the one that had changed Derek – roared. Not a growl
this time, just the animal roar of a rabid beast.
Christopher remembered what Aaron had said about distributed intelligence. How an octopus arm, cut off from the primary nodes, would still try to feed a mouth that wasn't there.
Oh, no.
The hulking zombie noticed them. Cried out.
Charged.
And was stopped by a smaller form.
Amulek moved so fast he was less than a blur. One moment kneeling on the asphalt, the next moment planting himself in front of a giant who had suddenly stilled.
Amulek's knife had appeared, and was jammed up through the base of the chin, through the mouth, into its brain.
The zombie twitched.
"Die, you sonofabitch." And it was Amulek who said it as he stared at the thing that he had chosen as the focus of his terrible wrath.
The zombie stared at the teen for an instant. Christopher thought he saw something in the thing's eyes. A spark of warmth, humanity peering out from behind the dark veil that had been drawn over it.
Always before the things had gone mad. But this time was different. After the King, everything would be different.
The zombie did not go mad. It simply fell.
Then all of them did.
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There was no loud thudding of meat on pavement as the things folded around them. Nor was there much sound when the zombies that had held to the buildings let go and dropped. The lowest ones were mere feet above the ground, and when they fell they provided quiet cushions for those above them, who in turn provided a soft surface for those above them.
The ones already on the ground, the ones who had been standing all around the survivors, were packed so tightly that they simply folded into themselves. Many remained standing, captured in the tangle of limbs and bodies. Some looked almost like they were embracing, like friends or lovers saying a final, melancholy goodbye.
Dorcas, Mo, Theresa's brother, and Carina slumped. They fell curled into each other, with Mo's arm across them all as though in a final embrace.
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