“I don’t like it!” shrieked the little girl. “Who are they?”
Ken began climbing, and could tell from the vibrations in the steel that Christopher was doing the same. He looked up and saw Maggie scaling the tower right above him.
Buck and his mother were nowhere to be seen. He didn’t know if they had fallen or were just far ahead. He didn’t care, either.
Twin thuds. Twin tremors. Ken looked down and saw Dorcas and Aaron. Dorcas almost fell, screaming as she landed straight on her broken arm. Aaron threaded his own good arm through a crossbar and then grabbed her tank top. It stretched, almost tore.
Then Aaron grunted and yanked her back to the tower. They started to climb. Each of them one-handed.
Hope was still shrieking.
“It’s okay,” said Derek again.
“I don’t like it!” screamed Hope.
“The man looks nice!” shouted Derek.
“Not him, them!”
Don’t look, Derek, thought Ken. Don’t look down. Don’t look at what Hope is seeing.
But the boy did. Ken could tell he looked, because his son’s breath suddenly sped up.
He didn’t scream. Derek wasn’t a screamer, not unless his loved ones were hurt. But Ken knew his son was terrified.
Because he had seen what was coming for them.
22
Ken had noted that the things, the zombies, moved as if connected. Aware of one another. They seemed to be more complete when near others of their kind, to the point that when he and Dorcas had been surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of the things while on top of a storage building, he had thought they almost seemed like one single organism. Like each zombie wasn’t its own creature, but rather a single cell of a larger monster.
Now he saw that even more clearly. Looking down from over a hundred feet, watching as what looked like most of the population of Boise swarmed to the base of the Wells Fargo Center.
It had to be two hundred thousand of the things.
Nor did they stop at the bottom of the building. The tremors that the group had been feeling weren’t what it felt like when a coordinated horde of two hundred thousand zombies mobbed the base of the building. No, it was the feeling when they were climbing up the building.
Ken didn’t know how it was possible. But then, he didn’t know how the zombies could be producing acids that ate through wood, concrete, even steel. He didn’t know how they could be spinning webs. He didn’t know how beating their brains out could seem to simply enrage them. How the things could exist in the first place.
It was all impossible.
And there they were. Scaling the side of the Wells Fargo Center, screaming and growling, the sounds of their cries grinding into Ken’s mind, calling to him. It was harder and harder to keep climbing. He wanted to let go.
Only the weight of his son around his neck kept him going. Only his family kept him from giving up.
He glanced down as something hit the crane. Hundreds of the zombies were flinging themselves through the smoke that obscured the base of the massive machine. They erupted like demons from the worst parts of hell. Smoke clung to them like a garment, and some of the creatures were actually on fire.
They didn’t seem to notice or care.
More of the things clambered up the side of the building. Snarling, spitting, growling. Thousands and thousands coming at Ken and the other survivors. Hundreds more coming up the crane’s tower, leaping from bar to bar, from strut to strut.
He wondered if it was possible for too many people to be on a building; what would happen if too much weight fell against the already-stressed crane.
The things were fast. Faster than the survivors. Much faster.
There was a ripping sound. The crane had been hung up on the side of the Wells Fargo Center, stuck at an angle and clearly at least partially separated from whatever tethers had once kept it upright and stable.
Now it started to slip across the face of the building.
It started to fall.
23
The noise that came from the combination of metal scraping across concrete and the metal itself twisting and bending was by far the loudest thing Ken could remember hearing. Louder even than the explosions that had gone off nearby and – in some cases – right on top of him. It was loud enough that it even drowned out the sound of the throngs of zombies that were yanking themselves bodily up the crane and the sides of the high-rise toward him and the others.
The crane tipped. Vibrating as it shredded along the side of the building. And Ken couldn’t think about holding onto Derek, couldn’t think about Hope or Liz or Maggie. All he could think about was clamping his fingers around the nearest pieces of metal, circling his legs around the closest crossbars.
Praying.
The crane tilted. Shrieked. Stuttered to a stop. Shrieked and began tilting again. Moving toward 9th Street. Ken had been almost upright a moment ago, and now he was holding on at a seventy-degree angle. Still upright, still closer to vertical than horizontal, but being like this somehow made the crane seem like an even more precarious place to be.
It jerked and stopped moving.
Ken realized that Derek was still holding on to his neck, screaming in fear, the sudden movement of the thing that constituted their entire world wrenching terror shrieks from the boy.
But the screams were music. His boy was still here. Still safe. And maybe… maybe the shift had bought them some time.
He looked down. Hoping that some of the things had fallen, that they had lost speed at the very least.
They were still close. So close.
And then something above made a sound.
“Help!” Ken’s overwrought brain registered that it was Maggie, but only barely. He was running on empty – physically, emotionally, mentally. It seemed to take everything he had just to look up.
Just to crane his neck.
Just in time to see his wife fall.
24
“Maggie!”
She hung for a second, probably less. But time is one of the indicators that whoever is behind the universe is a madman. The entirety of Ken’s week-long honeymoon had only seemed to last minutes. The first years of his children’s lives had come and gone in an eyeblink.
But the time he had had an infected tooth in Chile and couldn’t find anyone to take care of it… three days that had lasted years. The night that Hope had had a fever that hit one hundred and five degrees before doctors managed to get her temperature under control… a lifetime.
And now, watching for the half-second before his wife let go, he felt himself grow old and die five times, ten times, a thousand times.
Then the eternal second finally – mercifully – ended. Her hands let go of the crossbar that they had been holding onto.
She fell.
Not straight down. The crane was at an angle, and she didn’t plummet between the massive support beams that the survivors had been using as a ladder. Instead she slid down, falling past Ken and Christopher with a scream, twisting –
(Protecting the baby, she’s falling on her back to protect the baby but now she can’t grab onto anything, dear God, Mags, turn around!)
– so she was face-up, reaching for Ken as she slid past him. He reached for her. Too slow.
Christopher tried to grab her as well. Missed. Hope screamed, “Mommeeeeee!” the final syllable seeming to trail after the little girl’s mother as Maggie plummeted downward.
She careened past Dorcas, who was watching with an agonized look on her face, clearly wishing she could do something. But the older woman could barely hold herself onto the steel frame that had become so ephemeral beneath them, let alone grab another person.
Then….
“Oof!”
The sound of bodies hitting, of wind thumping out of lungs, was audible. Painful.
Aaron had somehow jumped down and over. Putting himself in the path of Maggie’s fall. She collided with him, her legs smashing into his shoulders, then
rolling over him in a strangely balletic move before continuing down.
Like Dorcas, Aaron had only one hand. He had already done the impossible, moving like that. But even he couldn’t grab onto the woman and her child.
Maggie kept falling.
25
Down. Down. Maggie tumbled over Aaron’s body, over him. Past him.
Ken’s vision telescoped. There were still easily a hundred thousand of the zombies at the base of the Wells Fargo Center, clustered so closely together that they looked like an oil slick. But more terrifying were the tens of thousands that were scaling the sides of the building, crawling impossibly upward, somehow sticking to the sheer walls, pulling themselves toward the survivors.
And worst of all were the shrieking monsters that were crawling up the crane itself. Smoke billowing from below them, fire coming off their clothing and their very skin. It was a view of Hell worse than any biblical vision from Revelation.
Most of the things were still fairly far away. But one of them had broken away from the horde. It was a huge creature, at least six-foot-six and broad to match. Pure muscle, from what Ken could see, dressed in what had once probably been jeans and a tank top.
The thing was a terrifying mixture of light and dark. The zombie’s skin was utterly white to the point of being pink. Ken suspected that the thing must have been an albino before the world ended – unless this was one more symptom of the change.
But the white, unblemished skin was only on the thing’s left half. Beyond that, a line bisected the thing neatly down the middle, separating it into right and left halves.
On the right half, there was no white skin, no trace of once-humanity. All was black and crimson. Charred by the fire the zombie had willingly gone through to get at its prey. Its skin sloughed off in ragged sheets, exposing bone and muscle that were just as dark and burnt as the skin above them.
Maggie screamed. Not just terror, but pain. So did Aaron, and Ken’s vision snapped back to his wife and the heroic older man.
The cowboy had down his work well. He hadn’t stopped Maggie’s tumbling fall, but had slowed it enough that she could reach up and grab something.
Aaron’s leg.
Maggie dangled, her back to the structure of the crane’s tower. Liz’s head slumped forward and down, as though the toddler were curious to see what lay below them.
The black/white monster growled, a noise louder than the others’ shouts. It sounded almost triumphant.
It was only perhaps fifteen feet below Maggie’s dangling tennis shoes. Close to her, and coming fast.
26
Aaron was screaming. It was the first time that Ken could remember the cowboy making a sound like that. He realized the older man was holding onto the bars of the crane with his good hand and had somehow wrapped the mangled fingers of his right hand around a bar as well. Trying to hold onto Maggie’s weight.
“I’ll get her,” Ken shouted. But there was no way that was going to happen.
Christopher started moving down. Grappling with the still-writhing Hope, but clearly game to try and help Maggie.
Dorcas had no chance. Her arm was too shattered for her to do anything but hang on; try to climb.
And the black/white monster was now within ten feet of Maggie.
Ken had survived all this. He had kept himself alive, had saved others.
I’ll think of a way.
Zombies on the walls.
What can I do?
Zombies under us.
I’ve got to think of something.
My wife. My baby.
Nothing was coming.
He had nothing.
He realized that his only options were to climb down and die, or climb up and save himself and his son, but live with the fact that he had abandoned his wife and baby.
He couldn’t make either choice.
But even the refusal to make a decision, he knew, was essentially a default to the latter alternative.
Maggie screamed.
The huge zombie grabbed her foot.
27
No one knew what to do. Everyone was frozen.
Everyone but one.
Derek.
The nine-year-old moved. Too fast for Ken to react, too fast for Christopher to catch.
“Mommy!” he screamed, and suddenly his weight was gone from Ken’s shoulders. The boy flung himself off Ken’s back, jumping from his father’s flesh to the steel of the crane and then climbing down so fast he was a blur.
“Stop him!” shouted Ken.
Christopher and then Dorcas each reached for the boy in turn. He danced out of range of both, agile as a monkey.
The creature, the black/white beast, had pulled itself up to Maggie’s legs. One bite was all it would take. One bite, and she would be gone in a matter of seconds.
The zombie opened its mouth.
“Not…,” screamed Derek, rushing down headfirst past Aaron…
… the zombie reared back…
“… my…,” the boy continued…
… the white/black abomination thrust its face toward Maggie’s leg…
“… MOTHER!” Derek finished, kicking off into space.
The zombie bit down.
28
The teeth sunk into flesh.
The world seemed to fall silent.
There was only wind. The sound of smoke puffing past. And a scream.
“NO!”
Ken didn’t know who screamed. If it was him, or Maggie, or someone else. It didn’t matter.
All that mattered was the sight of his boy. The sight of Derek, who had always been the one to take care of his sisters, who had always seemed more aware of others’ pain than of his own, putting himself between his mother and baby sister and the looming threat.
The sight of the beast biting the child’s arm.
The sight of Derek, looking up at the sky. His mouth opening.
And then sound returned as Derek screamed. Not in pain, but madness. His eyes clouded over, and everything that had made him so special was suddenly… just… gone. Gone, and he was one of them.
Bloody sweat exploded from the boy’s pores. His body convulsed with the change, and that bought them all some time. His hands and feet punched out, and his little foot caught the black/white demon under the chin. The thing growled and let go of Maggie to grab Derek… what had been Derek. To do so, the monster also let go of its hold on the crane.
Derek and the black/white beast fell, both of them snarling with rage, reaching for Maggie and Liz as they plummeted. They disappeared into the smoke that still billowed up from the base of the crane.
“They’re gone.”
Someone yanked at Ken. Christopher, he thought. But he couldn’t be sure. A weight fell on his shoulders. A crying something.
The voice came again. “They’re gone. Take care of your daughter.”
“Shhh,” said Ken. Not even sure why he was saying it. Part of him realized that Christopher had passed Hope to him, then had gone down to help Maggie and the others. But the greater part of him – the part of him that mattered – didn’t understand why he was saying it. Why he was doing anything.
“Get moving, dammit!”
Again, he thought that was Christopher. And again, he couldn’t be positive. Ken moved his feet mechanically, just as he kept whispering, “Shhh,” mechanically, and wasn’t even sure if he would have noticed if Hope stopped crying.
He couldn’t hear much. Just his son’s scream, “Not my MOMMY!”
Just his son’s next scream, the pain of being bitten and then the rage as he became what had bitten him.
And then the words, “He’s gone.” Over and over in Ken’s mind.
The crane listed again. Shuddering.
“Shhh,” he whispered. He kept crawling as the crane continued its mad tilt. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
And he did not care that he lied.
29
The sound of the crane continuing to tilt must have been at
least as loud as it had been before, but Ken’s ears seemed to have been stuffed with cotton. He barely heard the noise. There wasn’t enough room in his mind to hear what was going on around him and also replay the images of recent past.
The thing that brought him back to the moment was a strange prickling in his stomach. The sensation was unnerving, one that he couldn’t place for a moment. Then he realized it was weightlessness, the feeling of his body hitting nearly zero-gravity as the crane dropped out from under him.
Then the massive apparatus stopped moving, arrested by some piece of the Wells Fargo Center, or by the jib hitting part of the high-rise across the street. Either way, Ken fell into the metal with bone-crushing force. Hope, still clinging to him, screamed even louder and he realized that she was relying on him. She would die if he didn’t get her out of here.
He clamped an arm tightly around her. Not as a rote motion, but like it mattered. He kissed her hair, surprised for some reason at how warm the top of her head was. She felt like she had been running around outside on a summer day.
Would there ever be such a thing again? Or had winter come to stay?
“I’m here,” he shouted. “Daddy’s here!”
“Daddy?” She screamed the word back, divided into equal parts terror, surprise, and faith. The monsters were here, but now Daddy was here, and he would save her.
Ken hoped her belief was less misplaced than Derek’s had been.
Forget about that. That’s not for now. Time for that later.
What if there is no later?
He climbed. He didn’t look down, didn’t look back. His wife was back there. Liz was with her. Dorcas and Christopher and Aaron, too.
But right now, the world – his whole world – was in his arms, and he had to climb away from the nightmare below. He held Hope, and she was fragile and bright, and he couldn’t lose her.
The Colony: Renegades (The Colony, Vol. 2) Page 5
