by J. Thorn
Ken focused on Christopher. The young man walked effortlessly, as though pulling himself through a wrecked passage in the middle of a collapsed building was something he did every day. Ken kept slipping and sliding in dust and wreckage. He could hear Dorcas doing the same behind him, and even Aaron cursed under his breath every once in a while.
“You meant for that to happen?” said Dorcas, breath huffing out between the words. “How’d you learn to blow up buildings?”
Christopher laughed sheepishly. “I didn’t mean that to happen. I figured I’d knock a hole in the floor, knock back the creeps –”
“Zombies,” said Ken without thinking.
“Huh?” said Christopher, then nodded almost immediately. “Yeah, they are kind of zombie-esque, I guess. Anyway, the building coming down was definitely outside the scope of my plans.” He chuckled. “Still, dream big, right?”
Ken could see what he assumed to be their exit ahead: a crack that seemed like it was hanging in gray space. A moment later he followed Christopher out a rift in the side of the ruined, sagging building. His fingers throbbed – strange, because they weren’t there. Stranger still, he could feel his wedding ring, even though it was clamped around his dismembered finger and wedged between stones in a destroyed building far behind him. The ring wasn’t touching him, but it felt too tight. It hurt. A lot.
His wedding ring had never bothered him before. Not since the first moment that Maggie slipped it on his finger. He always loved wearing it. But now it hurt.
He hoped that wasn’t an omen.
The passageway exited at a rickety metal stairwell midway up the slumped over pile of rubble and junk that had been a fully functioning building only a few hours before. Ken couldn’t tell if it the stairwell was a fire escape or simply metal stairs to the second level businesses. It was bent and twisted, a blasted mockery of itself. Black metal peeked out from a heavy layer of gray dust and dark soot that coated this side of the structure.
Ken recognized this area. They were facing south on 9th Street. He didn’t know how that was possible, since he was sure they had been a block north of here. Either the rubble they had climbed through had covered several blocks, or the top part of the One Capital Center building through which they had escaped had lain at a strange angle, so when they jumped off of it they were on a different block than he had calculated.
Either way… he looked to his right. And there it was. The Wells Fargo Center.
“So,” said Christopher, reaching out a hand to help Dorcas onto the stairwell landing, “do you guys have a plan or – hey!”
Ken barely heard the last. Barely heard the others shouting for him to stop. All he could see was the building where his family had been when this happened. All he could hear was his wife calling him in his mind, his children crying out, screaming for Daddy.
He forgot everything but his family. Forgot the zombies, forgot the pain in his phantom fingers and in the rest of his body. He forgot his new friends.
He ran down the stairs and was on the street in the dust and smoke in seconds. The others were racing after him, and he heard Christopher saying, “What’s going on? What’d I miss?” over and over.
The street was covered in debris and blood and bodies. But the bodies were of the normally horrific variety. None of them were moving, they were dead and dead to stay – at least, until the universe flipped on its axis again and once more rewrote the rules of mortality.
No zombies. There had been tens of thousands crowding up against the head of the One Capital Center building. Where were they now?
It didn’t matter. Maybe the shattering of the building had scared them off, maybe they had found new prey, maybe they were late for a mass hairdresser’s appointment. Ken didn’t care. All that he cared about was the clear sightline between him and the Wells Fargo Center.
It was a little more than a block away. It took him less than a minute to run it. The smoke grew thicker as he approached, and he remembered what seemed a lifetime ago, seeing something explode at the base of the huge crane next to the Wells Fargo building, seeing the crane tilt sideways against the structure. He looked up and saw the massive crane, almost at the corner of the building, leaning at an angle against the northeast face.
He ran below it. He could hear the metal creaking far above him.
Below him, he heard something like dead leaves. He looked down and saw a thick blanket of insects. All dead. Not bees, not what had attacked him and Dorcas before. These looked like millions upon millions of ants.
He ran over the dead bugs. He did not slip. Nor did he much care what had killed them. He was too close to the end of his search to care.
The Wells Fargo Center was shaped like a right triangle, and at the square of it there was an entrance, a bank of glass doors. The middle two were revolving doors, and both of them were grotesquely jammed shut, dead bodies tangled within them like clots in the building’s ventricles.
On either side of the revolving doors were simple hinged doors. One of them was whole, the other had been knocked out and was only a metal frame holding nothing but air.
Ken ran for the empty door. He didn’t care at that moment what dangers might lay beyond that dark hole. Only that his family could be there. Must be there.
Sometimes, reckless action was the only available substitute for hope.
74
The Wells Fargo Center was one of Boise’s largest buildings. Wedge-shaped, eleven stories tall, hundreds of offices. Ken had no thought of what to do beyond going to the Wells Fargo branch office that he knew was in the far corner of the first floor.
He ran into the lobby, trying hard to convince himself that he was running this fast because he was about to find his family. Trying hard to believe they had a chance at life. Trying hard to believe it was excitement and not pure panic that was driving his heart against his ribs in machine-gun bursts.
Failing in all of those attempts.
Something buzzed. The sound reminded him of the bees that had died as one while he and Dorcas cowered in the car outside the CPA’s office. He dropped down, almost going to hands and knees as though his body were determined to burrow right through the floor if necessary to get away from another cloud of the things.
It was not bees. It was an elevator. The doors slid halfway shut with a tired whirr before stopping against the body of a man laying facedown half in and half out of the elevator.
It registered on Ken that there was still power in the building. How much longer that would last, he had no way of knowing. The grid was failing in huge swathes, that much was clear. And equally clear was that Idaho Power was not going to be sending out teams to deal with power failures anytime soon. Perhaps ever. Power fled from an area was power likely gone forever.
He heard feet behind him. The others. They caught up to him now, easy enough since he was no longer moving. Just standing. Just staring.
Not at the man.
Not at the elevator, opening and closing and opening and closing with the restless action of an ocean tide.
Not at the other bodies that lay every few feet throughout the lobby and hall. Not even at the ones who had been pulled viciously apart and whose innards painted the walls like a grotesque mockery of Christmas garlanding.
“Ken?” Dorcas’ voice was soft. She sounded worried. “What is it?”
Ken didn’t answer. He just walked to the elevator. Stopped in front of it.
Knelt down.
75
Ken was very much of the opinion that mommies and daddies served very different purposes, and nowhere was that more evident than when he and Maggie went to Babies “R” Us looking for something for one of the kids. It didn’t matter if it was a pacifier or a crib: Ken looked for the cheapest one. Maggie looked for the one that had the highest safety ratings, preferably achieved while the product was submerged in lit napalm in the middle of a nuclear reactor that was suffering a core meltdown.
They usually came down somewhere in the middle. Ken
would remind Maggie that he didn’t have the money to purchase the blanket that could also be used as a parachute in case of forced landings during supersonic flight, and Maggie would remind Ken that children were more important than things like having a nice TV or what the neighbors thought of their car. Ken would shift his budget priorities, and Maggie would eventually admit that having exceptionally-protected children wouldn’t matter much if they didn’t have money for food while sitting in the middle of a crib equipped with changing table attachment and capable of warding off evil curses.
The stroller Ken was kneeling beside, the one only inches from the bloody hands of the dead man wedged half in the elevator, had been the subject of a particularly lengthy compromise session. The school district had just informed Ken and the other teachers that budget freezes would keep any raises “at current levels” (meaning nonexistent) for the next two years, and he thought that baby Liz might just have to make do with being Velcroed to a skateboard or something equally cost-effective.
Maggie did not care for that concept.
They argued. Divorce was out of the question – it was never an option, not ever – but he thought a few nights on the couch loomed large in his future.
Eventually, Ken caved in. Because he loved Maggie. Because he recognized that, yes, the stroller was going to be used for years and should be a good one. Because he hated sleeping on their second-hand couch.
The stroller became the newest, nicest thing they owned.
Of course, that didn’t last long. Babies had a way of casually destroying things. They had a lot in common with earthquakes and rabid dogs that way. It wasn’t long before the once-pristine light-green body and plaid seat became blotchy and stained. Grimy beyond recovery, no matter how much Maggie washed and wiped.
Ken knew every spot and stain. He knew where many had come from, and thought that was an indicator he was a good dad. He cared enough to be there for the spills, to try to help with the cleanup. Even when he wasn’t there, he noticed. He asked about the stories, he found out what had happened. He wanted to know.
But now… he didn’t know if knowing would be good for him. The old stains were still there, were still familiar. But there was one more: a large, bloody handprint across the back of the stroller’s chair.
Right where two-year-old Liz’s head would have rested.
76
Keep it together.
Liz was the first baby he was able to enjoy. With Derek he was too terrified about screwing it all up to properly revel in the experience of being a new father. With Hope he was terrified anew – already projecting forward to her teen years and wondering if he was equipped to deal with the contradictions inherent in protecting a Princess and teaching a girl to be her own strong woman.
He finally settled in and learned to have fun with Liz. With the little girl who smiled so wide. Who growled and jumped on his back every chance she got. Who sat and watched cartoons in a little chair he made her for her first birthday. Who fell asleep in his arms the way none of the others had ever done.
And there was a bloody print where her head had been.
Keep it together, Ken.
Blood.
Keep it together.
That’s a lot of blood.
Keep it –
They’re dead.
No.
Dead.
Not yet.
The baby, the kids.
You don’t know –
Maggie.
NOT UNTIL YOU SEE THEIR BODIES.
He realized he was rocking back and forth, his arms clasped tight around each other. Dorcas’ hand was on his shoulder.
“We should go,” she said. Her voice was soft.
Ken nodded. He looked at the tray that snapped into place across Liz’s lap. There were some Goldfish crackers in the cup holder. Liz always tossed her sippy cups over when Maggie put them in the cup holder, so that nook had become an impromptu Goldfish sanctuary.
The orange crackers were flecked with blood as well.
Ken stood.
Dorcas’ hand was still on his shoulder. Aaron and Christopher waited a few paces away. They both looked at their feet, like there might be comfort somewhere on the blood-streaked floor, if only they could find it.
The elevator whirred. Closing on the dead man. Opening again.
Whump. Whirrrr. Whump. Whirrrr. Whump.
Ken looked at the corpse.
Dorcas moved away, as though giving him space to commune with the dead – both the ones whose bodies were present and the ones whose bodies were not.
Ken stood still and silent for a long moment. Then his face knotted, becoming a tight mass of confusion.
He took a step.
“Where you going?” said Christopher.
A moment later, Dorcas said, “Ken?”
Ken didn’t answer either of them. He didn’t dare. He just kept walking.
77
Ken felt like if he spoke, if he did anything other than breathe, then it would fall apart. It would disappear and be gone. Just a vivid dream dashed upon waking into the nightmare of his new reality.
So he ignored the others. Just kept his eyes locked on what he had seen, kept his heart locked on hope, and kept his mind locked away from the impossibility of what he was hoping for.
Whump. Whirrrr. Whump. Whirrrr. Whump.
If the elevator doors had been closed, he wouldn’t have seen it.
If the elevator light had been extinguished, the interior dark, he wouldn’t have seen it.
If he hadn’t been kneeling next to the stroller, he wouldn’t have seen it.
If, if, if….
But he did. He did see it.
Just beyond the dead man’s legs, trailing limply into the elevator, there was a small pile of color on the brown floor.
Goldfish crackers.
That might not have been enough. Might not have been enough to spur Ken to movement. They could have come from anywhere, after all. Or they could have been flung there after the zombies… did what they would have done to his baby.
But next to the goldfish was another item. A sippy cup. Purple and pink.
And above both, on the mirrored back of the elevator, someone had written something. The lettering was tan, a color he recognized as well: Maggie’s lipstick.
“Ken: 9th Fl.”
78
Ken ran the last two feet, leaping over the dead man.
“Ken!” Dorcas joined him in the elevator. “What are you doing?”
“They’re alive.” Ken leaned over, barely noticing how badly his back hurt, not even registering his missing fingers, and grabbed the dead man’s legs. He shoved them out of the elevator. Not far enough. He began muscling the dead weight out of the cab.
Aaron stood just outside the elevator. He looked at the mirror in the back of the cab and it seemed to Ken like the man’s face slackened. Not in hope, but in sympathy.
“Going up is a bad idea,” he said. “Nowhere to retreat to if the things come again.”
“Seriously,” said Christopher, taking up a position behind the older man. “We should get outta here.”
Ken didn’t stop moving. “I can’t ask you to come with me. You’ve all saved me, and I can never repay you.” He kicked the dead man’s trailing foot out of the track of the elevator’s doors. “But I have to go.”
“Bad idea,” said Aaron.
“Yeah,” said Christopher.
They both stepped in.
Dorcas pressed the round circle with a “9” in the center.
The doors shut.
The elevator started to rise.
With it, questions rose in Ken’s mind. What was happening? What were these things, that had destroyed almost everyone and everything humanity held dear in less than a day? Why did they stop moving and breathe in time, why were the times they did so decreasing, and what would happen when that “countdown” reached zero? What had killed all the insects? How come one had vomited acid?
What would
he find when he reached the ninth floor?
Ken looked at the other survivors. At Christopher, to whom he had said less than a hundred words. At Aaron, who had saved Ken’s life but who remained a complete enigma. At Dorcas.
She caught his gaze. Raised her shoulders as though unsure of why they were coming, and said, “It’s still the right thing to do.”
Ken didn’t know if he would find his family when the doors opened.
But he knew he had family here with him.
END OF BOOK ONE
THE SAGA CONTINUES IN BOOK TWO
THE COLONY: RENEGADES
Author’s Note
I like zombie books. But almost all of them move from a place of despair – not merely that zombies exist (as if that weren’t bad enough), but that humans are so rotten that the zombies are probably the least terrible thing to deal with anyway.
I wanted to do something different. Something that had never been done before. One thing I wanted was to show a real collapse – a lot of books about apocalyptic events seem to have a few bad things happen, then give their characters a few days or weeks off to recuperate. I am a mean person. I wanted my characters to twist in the wind, to bang and batter and bruise them to the point of physical, mental, and emotional destruction.
More than that, though, I wanted to write a hopeful zombie story. A story about humanity running into something terrible… and banding together. Rising above the terror and becoming something more than they once had been.
Horror is at its best when it shows us not just the monsters among us, but the angels as well.
This meant that the bad guys – the zombies – would have to be truly terrible, beyond anything ever seen in a zombie story before. So I started putting together my own zombie mythology. Then, when I had an evil threatening enough to prove my thesis – that humanity is not only able to save itself against nearly infinite evil, but noble and good enough to actually merit salvation – I began writing.
