by J. Thorn
“Keep going, trust me!” shouted Ken. No time for explanations.
They reached the fence. He put his hand over the invisible line that would quickly turn the ladder from bridge into unbalanced teeter totter. He kept going.
Passed onto the other side of the fence.
Teeth and madness below.
Dorcas put her hand over the fence.
The ladder started to shift.
Clank.
Ken looked back as the ladder slammed back to the rooftop, borne down by the weight of the two zombies fighting to crawl out after them.
“Keep moving!” he screamed to Dorcas.
One of the zombies fell off the ladder with a scream of rage. Two more took its place. Then another three. The horde-organism had extended itself to the roof, and now pushed its living pseudopodia out onto the ladder, each with its own face and mouth and gut.
The ladder clanked. Groaned as more and more of the mindless things pushed their way onto it. Ken didn’t know what the ladder’s weight rating was, but doubted it was designed for lateral use by ten – eleven, twelve – full-grown people.
He pushed forward. The gap was ahead. Five feet. A longish jump on solid ground.
But when you were running up an incline that was mostly made of holes, one of you concussed at least twice over and the other one nursing a badly broken arm… impossible.
38
“I can’t make it,” shouted Dorcas.
“You’ll make it.”
“I can’t hang on.”
“You won’t have to.”
He was at the end of the ladder. It crackled as though nervous. Something pinged and one of the beasts clambering up its length behind them toppled off, still holding one of the ladder rungs, and was swallowed up by the swelling host below.
Ken stood up, balanced precariously on the last rung of the ladder. He thought a stiff breeze might blow him off. He tried not to think of what was below.
He turned to face Dorcas. Saw her. Saw the ten man-beasts only a few feet behind. Seven on the other side of the fence. Three on this side.
The ladder started to buckle.
Ken nudged himself up onto his toes.
Tipped himself back like a diver doing a reverse swan…
“NO!” Dorcas screamed
… and fell.
39
Two things happened almost at the same moment.
Ken felt his blindly reaching hands slap against the rough concrete lip of the freeway behind him.
And the ladder gave out a shuddering scream and started to bend, folding over the top of the fence like it had grown suddenly exhausted by its efforts and just needed to relax.
Dorcas screamed. Hitched up on her knees and reached with her good arm.
Ken flipped his toes from their position atop the last rung, jamming them under the rung, then knifing his toes up over the top of the ladder’s support columns. The full weight of the ladder and the occupants on this side of the fence came down on his shins, his feet, his hands.
Ken screamed. Felt the skin peel off his shins as the ladder pulled on him.
But the ladder didn’t fall.
“Climb!” he shouted through gritted teeth.
Dorcas got to her feet, leaping across the last few feet to the end of the ladder.
The three zombies on this side of the fence started growling louder, as though sensing that they were in danger of losing their meal. They skittered on hands and feet across the final yards of the ladder.
Dorcas pulled herself one-handed up Ken’s body. Planted a foot on his leg, another fell right into his crotch. He shouted in pain. A memory flashed through his mind: Derek’s first year, when he had started crawling and then walking. His favorite thing to do was crawl or walk from one end of the couch to another, clearly enjoying the bounce of the cushions.
If Ken was sitting on the couch, it was an even bigger treat. Like a small mountain to be climbed. A fun obstacle for the infant.
And every time – every single time – the kid crossed over, he managed to put a surprisingly hard baby foot in Ken’s crotch.
When Hope came, Ken joked with his wife that he was surprised his sperm count had survived the continuing assault of Derek’s climbing trips.
He wondered if this was going to be his last memory. His little boy slamming him in the nuts on at least a daily basis.
There are worse ways to go.
And he would have paid Dorcas back.
The back end of the ladder, the part beyond the fence, cracked in two with a sound like a rifle shot. The seven monsters crawling its length fell with a scream.
The three on this side were still coming, held up by the fence and by Ken’s rapidly tearing tendons and muscles.
Dorcas’ weight left him.
Her voice came from above. She sounded like an angel.
“Let go,” she said. “I’m here, let go!”
Ken almost let his hands relax. A move that would have been suicide since Dorcas wasn’t holding onto him; and even if she had been, it wasn’t likely she could haul his body weight up and over the edge of the freeway shoulder. Then he realized what she meant.
The closest of the three zombies still on the ladder leaped at him.
40
Ken relaxed his feet.
The ladder fell with a clang and a wet thud as the weight of two full-grown men drove it into the pile of bodies below.
The thing that had jumped for Ken was still in the air. Snarling. Mouth open.
Its fingers brushed Ken’s chest.
Ken swung back in a short arc as his feet – which had been anchoring him as much as the ladder – let go. Just out of reach of the monster, which fell close enough that Ken could smell its breath, dark and damp and rotten, as it fell past him and was swallowed up in the monstrous swirl thirty feet below.
Ken swung backward into the concrete freeway footing. His feet and legs hit hard, further abrading the torn and lacerated flesh there.
He felt himself slipping.
He had originally intended to flip himself into a pull-up position, but now realized that was going to be impossible. He didn’t have the leverage for it, since he was essentially reaching behind himself at this point.
“Hold on!” he heard Dorcas screaming.
Sure. No problem.
He felt numb. Everywhere but his head, which throbbed.
Something smacked him on the nose.
“Sorry,” said a gruff voice. He didn’t recognize it, only realized that it certainly did not belong to Dorcas.
He realized that he had been hit by a belt buckle. One of the kind that were almost the size of a salad plate and could only be worn by ironic hipsters or deadly-serious cowboys.
A hand grabbed his arm, arresting his slow downward slide. The voice spoke again, sounding very much the opposite of an ironic hipster. “Grab it, boy.”
For a moment Ken couldn’t peel the fingers of his free hand away from the concrete. Now that he was supposed to let go, he couldn’t.
Then his fingers came away. He swore he heard a wet ripping, like the sound of Saran Wrap pulling off itself. He swung into space for a dizzy second, his body only anchored at one point, before managing to grab the belt.
The things below screamed. Piled up, piled up, piled up, still looking like some huge version of rabid ants.
Ken couldn’t climb. He was done. All he could do was clench his hand around the well-worn strip of leather. He couldn’t pull himself up.
He didn’t have to.
He heard a grunt, then started to rise, pulled at a slow but steady pace. He heard Dorcas say, “You got him?”
“Yup,” said the unseen gruff non-hipster.
The hand that had been holding Ken’s other hand trapped to the side of the freeway footing let go. And another hand – larger, matching the roughness of the voice it belonged to – wrapped itself around that hand a second later.
A third hand – Dorcas’, he figured – grabbed him u
nder the armpit.
And together they hauled him up.
Ken’s bare back scraped something metal. A moment later he could see that it was the small fence beside the freeway. Just strips of sheet metal with reflective stickers to warn motorists not to drive off the side of the freeway. They were sharp as knives.
And the pain as they bit into Ken’s back was probably the greatest feeling he had ever experienced.
It meant he was still alive.
They pulled him over. Dorcas and another someone Ken still hadn’t seen. He fell full-length to the ground, the hot pavement biting at his raw back. Smiling.
“We safe?” said Ken.
Dorcas grinned back. “For the moment.”
“Good.”
He meant to thank the mysterious benefactor who had saved them, but passed out instead.
41
Music. Boisterous and bright.
Click. Bzzzzz.
Click. Silence.
Click. Micky Mouse talking.
Click. Two kids arguing. One of them said something snarky and a crowd of people laughed.
Click. Silence again. Then… the growl.
Ken’s eyes fluttered. He jerked into semi-wakefulness. His body slammed upright, registering only peripherally that he was laying on something cold and very hard.
It was dark. Everything was dark. He felt like he’d been blinded. The only illumination came from one of the things. Not three feet away.
He screamed.
The thing looked at him. Its face was creased and blood-stained. Its eyes glinted like those of a wolf.
It opened its mouth.
“Easy, partner,” it said.
And it turned its gaze from Ken.
Ken felt his mouth slam shut, the scream cutting off abruptly.
A hand touched his forehead, and he almost screamed again before he realized it was Dorcas. “You’re hot,” she said. “We’ll have to find you some meds.”
“I’m fine,” he mumbled. He looked at the thing again. The glowing figure. Only now it seemed his eyes were working better, because he could see that it wasn’t a thing, and it wasn’t glowing. It was a man, hunched over a box that seemed at once familiar and alien, a relic of a world already ten times removed from Ken’s reality.
A television.
The man was sturdy and squat, with relaxed features and a weathered face that spoke of a life spent outdoors. He looked, Ken thought, like one of those men you ran into who “wrassled” things – things like bears, gators, and small countries – for a living. Men who had an ageless quality about them. Beards flecked with gray, as this man’s beard was, but whose hands and arms were the hands and arms of a man in his prime.
He looked like – and probably was – a cowboy. The real kind. Not a poser, the kind who bought hundred-dollar blue jeans and rode horses on weekends, but the kind of man who was as much at home on a horse as off, and whose jeans were designed for one purpose only: to take as much punishment as possible and keep on going.
“That’s Aaron,” said Dorcas. “He’s the one who rescued us.”
“Lucky us,” said Ken.
“Luck nothing,” said Dorcas. “He said he’d been watching from the freeway, trying to figure out a way to help us.”
“You obliged by coming to me, so thanks for that,” said Aaron. His gaze didn’t waver from the television. The TV was turned away from Ken, so he couldn’t tell what the other man was watching. But he still heard the growl that had awakened him. The sound of at least one of those things.
“What are you watching?” he said. “Where are we?”
He tried to stand up. “Maybe you should –” Dorcas began, but he waved her off. She sighed and put an arm under one of his. Helped him stand.
He realized Dorcas’ arm was bunched under fabric, not just slapping against his bare skin. In the strange, flickering light he could see he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt said, “I went to BOISE and all I got was this STUPID SHIRT (and a raging case of the CLAP).”
He looked at Dorcas. She grimaced. “We didn’t think you should just go around nekkid for the rest of your life. Don’t ask where we got it.”
The back of Ken’s head felt strange. Taut, like a drum that had been tightened too zealously. He touched it and felt something hard and knotted there.
“You were banged up pretty bad,” said Dorcas. “Aaron found some superglue and just glued you back together.” She glanced at the cowboy. “He’s handy.”
Ken noticed that Dorcas’ broken arm had been set, her forearm duct-taped to a ruler and then hung from a sling made from an oversized handkerchief.
“Looks like he is handy,” said Ken. He took a few steps toward the older man, who still hadn’t looked away from the television.
The sound of Ken’s shoes echoed strangely and he looked around for the first time. The flickering light of the TV bounced off four walls that seemed to be made of burnished metal with tiny knobs set every few inches along their surfaces. The ceiling had the same reflective quality, a long expanse with a small vent set into the middle.
“Bank vault,” said Dorcas.
Ken thought of Maggie and the kids. The Wells Fargo Center. Could it be possible he’d made it there in his sleep – or unconsciousness?
Even in the dim light of the television set, Dorcas must have seen the hope on his face. She shook her head. “We got as far as 11th Street when we saw another one of those… hordes… coming at us. We were carrying you so we had to get away as fast as we could.” She nodded toward Aaron, who was still glued to the TV set like it was final seconds of an epic Superbowl. “He was the one who thought of getting to the bank.”
“What bank?” asked Ken. He tried to stand on his own. His head started throbbing again, but he didn’t want to throw up. Progress.
“Bank of the Falls,” said Aaron.
Ken’s stomach plunged. They had actually gone backward. The Bank of the Falls was several blocks north and west of where they had been, nowhere near where Ken wanted to be.
Dorcas touched his shoulder. “We’re doing our best,” she whispered.
Ken realized his face must be an extremely open book. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just worried.”
The sounds coming from the television got louder. The growl. Ken felt like he should have been elated at the fact that there was still power in at least some parts of the city: the world couldn’t have ended yet if you could still watch a show; could still microwave a burrito, right? But instead he just felt dread at the sound of that enraged snarl.
He moved toward the TV. He remembered the feeling he had had when he first saw the bugs on his classroom window: that feeling of not wanting to see, but needing to know.
He worried that kind of thing would kill him.
But he worried more that not knowing would kill him faster.
He joined Aaron in front of the television.
42
At first Ken didn’t know what he was looking at. The camera kept tilting and moving. Then he recognized the bits and pieces of the background as the studio for one of the local news affiliates: all greens and blues and expensive-looking graphics.
And in the background, like the world’s most macabre laugh track, the continuing noise of the growl.
“Where’s it coming from?” said Dorcas.
A moment later, the answer presented itself. A woman came into view. She was close to the camera, her hands on either side of the frame as though she was embracing the equipment. Her hair and makeup had clearly been beautiful at one point, but were now a nest of snarls and streaks.
She stared into the camera.
“That’s Marie Wells,” said Dorcas.
“Who?” said Ken.
“She’s one of the anchors for Channel Seven News.”
Marie didn’t look like she’d be anchoring anything anytime soon. She growled louder, as though knowing that the people she desperately wanted to attack were on the other side of the camera. Her lips pulled back, barin
g teeth that were stained and clotted with the remains of something Ken preferred not to think about.
She headbutted the camera.
The movement came without any kind of telegraphing. One moment she was growling and snarling, the next her forehead slammed into the lens. There was a splash of red as some part of the equipment sliced her forehead wide open, and when she drew back the image was blurred – whether because of blood or because of makeup Ken couldn’t tell.
Marie could be made out, a crimson curtain running down her face. She stumbled around, still growling. No longer interested in the camera, but still clearly searching for something – someone – to kill.
“Change it,” whispered Dorcas.
Aaron reached out and touched a button on the television. It flipped over to at Tom & Jerry cartoon.
“That’s good news, right?” said Ken. The others looked at him. “Things can’t be too bad if the televisions are still going. Maybe this is only happening in Boise.”
Aaron and Dorcas shared a glance. Dorcas nodded.
Aaron flipped to a new channel.
43
Ken didn’t watch much news. His interest in news stopped right around the end of the Korean War. After that, things got too muddy for him. In fifty years, maybe the dust would have settled enough for him to look back and understand just who had done what to whom, but for now he mostly avoided contemporary information.
But he still knew what the CNN logo looked like.
Usually, however, the logo hung next to a ticker that highlighted breaking news items, and behind it would be an anchorperson and a studio. Now the logo was beside a ticker that sprouted nonsense, as though someone had fallen face first onto the teletype.
There was no anchor.
There was a studio. Clusters of computer towers and monitors. Most of them splattered with blood. Bodies laying across several tables.
And more than a dozen of the things, the zombies, walking around between the dead.
Ken was reminded of the zombies that had followed him out of the school. Like those few, these moved in a strangely coordinated way. Not as though they were telling one another what to do, more like…. He frowned, trying to conceptualize what he was seeing.
