by J. Thorn
Irrational, but then, so was the fact that the young guy looked so nice in the middle of disaster.
“Come on,” shouted the kid. “Safer out here.”
Ken didn’t like it. But then, he liked the idea of staying in the hall even less. Especially since he heard the sound of growling behind them. The things in the stairwell sounded like they had regained their composure. They were coming.
He looked at Dorcas. Arm still in a sling. At Aaron, his good right hand looking like a spider that had been squashed by a steel-toed boot.
“Can you guys make it?” he said.
“We’ll have to,” said Aaron. His face was still white, but he looked less like he was going to fall over than he had a moment before.
“We stay in here and they get us for sure,” agreed Dorcas. “Nowhere to go.”
“You first,” said Ken, gesturing for Dorcas to go ahead of him.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said.
He didn’t have time to argue the finer points of chivalry. He climbed out the broken window frame. Glass crunched as he stepped onto the outer sill. His body seized up automatically as his eyes tried to convince his mind that he was walking out the thirteenth floor of a high rise.
“I’m not that high up,” he said to himself. Trying to persuade himself that a fall wouldn’t kill him. The fall out of the school earlier hadn’t killed him, had it?
He looked down. Searching for a way to convince his recalcitrant body that stepping outside the building was the right thing to do.
He looked down.
And that was a huge mistake.
63
In his flight up the dark stairs, through a disembodied structure that had no right to be there, Ken had forgotten that the zombies following them weren’t the only ones they had to worry about.
There were also the ones that had been coming in through the other side of the building.
Those zombies had come in, had joined with the ones following the survivors. And Ken had assumed for some reason that that was it. Done deal.
But he was wrong. The ones that had joined up with their pursuers were just a small portion of the horde that had come at them from ahead.
This horde numbered at least in the tens of thousands. And they were all crammed into the street right below Ken’s feet. Growling and howling in a macabre imitation of a New Year’s celebration at Times Square. Only instead of waiting for a glowing ball to drop, they were reaching up in the obvious hope that flesh and bone would plummet to their grasp.
And as they had done when he and Dorcas were on the garage, they were swarming on top of one another. A dark wave of unlife: burying itself, rising a bit, burying itself again, rising still further.
They were easily thirty feet below him.
Only now it was twenty-nine.
Twenty-eight.
And the growl….
Give up. Give in. Give up. Give in.
“Now would be a good time to move,” said the kid.
Ken almost jumped off the side of the building. The kid had come back, sidling silently to Ken’s side and standing within a few feet of him. He was holding one-handed to a piece of weatherstripping that looked almost strong enough to hold up a malnourished infant. Still grinning.
“Just follow me, bud,” said the kid.
And Ken hated him not at all. Just followed him.
He heard crunches and crackles and knew that either Dorcas or Aaron was close behind. But he didn’t look back, afraid that if he did he would also see the surging things below.
How close are they, Ken? Give up….
Just climb.
Twenty feet? Eighteen? Give in….
CLIMB!
The kid moved quickly but carefully, and Ken realized his motions were slightly exaggerated: he was showing the others where to grip, where to place their feet.
“What’s your name?” said Ken. Not an appropriate moment, perhaps, but he didn’t want to think about what he was doing, didn’t want to think about what was below, didn’t want to ponder what might lay ahead.
“Christopher. Watch out for that glass.”
Ken shifted his hands in time to avoid gashing his palms.
The end of the building was coming up. He didn’t know what they would do then.
The growls below were close. Getting closer.
Worse, he heard growls inside the structure. The zombies inside seemed to have been thrown off by the fact that their prey had disappeared from the building, but how long before one of them spotted the survivors at a window frame?
Aaron grunted. “I think we got trouble.”
Ken looked at Christopher. The kid was grinning again. Or still. Maybe he hadn’t stopped. And now Ken was unsure whether he hated the kid or not. He suspected the teen might be a bit crazy.
Crazy or not, Christopher didn’t seem perturbed by the sound of zombies closing in on them from inside the building, or by the zombies surging toward their feet. He swung his pack around and unzipped it.
“You trust me?” he said to Ken.
64
Ken felt suddenly ill. “Do you trust me?” was the kind of question designed to make someone uncomfortable. Like saying, “I love you” to someone, there were only two possible outcomes: bliss or Titanic-scale wreckage. And the possibilities for bliss were limited when zombies were coming at you from all sides and from below.
A new set of noises chipped in at the edges of Ken’s already severely fragmented thoughts. He looked up, unsure if he was trying to zero in on possible new threats or just avoiding the kid’s question.
And saw that the zombies were above them as well. On the roof. Leaning over. Leaning out of the windows of the floor above them.
Some of them leaned too far. They fell. Not afraid, still reaching as they fell. Dorcas screamed as one of the plummeting beasts almost grabbed her tank top on its way past. Another of the falling creatures actually got a hand on the sill that Aaron stood on, but the cowboy kicked the beast in the face and it, too, fell.
Not far. The rising, turbulent mass of the creatures on the street was now only about fifteen feet below them.
Give up. Give in. Give up. Give in….
“Do you trust me?” the kid said.
Ken looked at him. The words, “Hell, no,” sprung to his lips.
And died there.
The kid wasn’t grinning.
Ken nodded.
The grin came back. “Good. Then I need you guys to stay right where you are.”
“WHAT?” Ken shrieked. Then he had to flatten himself against a shard of glass, trying not to impale himself as another zombie threw itself at him from above. He felt it pass by, felt the small hairs on his neck – the few that hadn’t been burnt, bludgeoned, or beaten into oblivion – blown by the wind of the thing’s passing.
When he pulled back again, the kid was gone.
“Where is he? Where’s Christopher?”
Neither Aaron nor Dorcas answered. They were busy dodging the things tossing themselves down at them like grasping, bloody spears.
Ken looked to his left. The building ended in a corner about twenty feet away. No idea what was beyond that.
But he couldn’t stay. He knew that was what the kid – Christopher – wanted. But staying was suicide.
Zombies below.
Zombies above, throwing themselves down.
Ken thought about going back in the building. He looked through the shattered glass of the window he stood before.
It looked like it had once been an office. Maybe an insurance company or a brokerage firm. Something that used a lot of cubicles, a lot of phones. Everything was a wreckage of wires and computer pieces and modular foam walls that had been tossed around like the building blocks of an angry child.
The wreckage was the only reason the zombies in the office hadn’t grabbed Ken, Dorcas, and Aaron yet. As it was, they were only a few feet away.
The zombies growled.
Ken felt something grab him from
behind. Felt something clinging to him, felt a heavy weight hit him like a bludgeon.
His foot slipped.
65
Ken felt something breathing in his ear.
Then he heard Dorcas scream and saw her kick out. The thing on his back chuffed, not in pain but in something like irritation. She kicked again. It fell.
Ken almost fell, too, his body fairly leaping upward as the extra weight left his body. He lurched forward, not caring that he almost skewered himself on a shard of glass. Just wanting not to fall to the things below.
Ten feet below.
But not as close as the zombies within the building. They were only a few feet away.
Reaching for him. For Dorcas. For Aaron.
And where was the kid? Where the hell had Christopher gone? Had he abandoned them?
It was a tough world – and it had certainly grown tougher in the last hours. Even in a place as neighborly as Idaho, people didn’t leave their doors unlocked anymore. People worried. They didn’t just trust.
But Christopher had asked Ken to trust him.
So did Ken trust him?
Yeah.
The things inside were five feet away.
Ken knew he should run. Not that there were many places to run. But he could have edged toward the corner of the building. Tried to get away. Tried to flee.
He didn’t. He stood firm.
He trusted.
66
There was a moment of peace. A single second - the fraction of an instant between seconds – where the world seemed to pause. There was no fear, there was no blood and violence. The zombies throwing themselves from above seemed to pause in midflight, the things cascading over each other in an effort to reach up seemed to stop piling higher.
The monsters that were now only inches away from reaching Ken and his friends seemed to cease all motion. He could see their teeth bared, the blood caked on so many of their faces, the skin pulled from bare bones on others.
But he felt no fear. He felt only regret. Sadness that he wasn’t going to see Maggie, wasn’t going to kiss her one last time. That he wouldn’t hold Derek, Hope, or Liz.
And then even that was gone. There was only a strange something that was at once familiar and unknown.
Resignation?
No.
Then, before he could figure out exactly what the feeling was, he heard four words.
“Hold on to something!”
Ken’s hands clenched. He didn’t even know what they were holding. But they held on tight. In the next instant there was a flash so bright it felt like a new sun had been born right in front of him.
The world snapped back into motion.
The feeling that he had been on the verge of understanding was gone. Disappeared in the brightness.
Boom.
The zombies in the building, the monsters that had a moment before been only inches from grabbing him, screamed in what sounded like rage, loss, anger.
Ken opened his eyes. Stars and neon Rorschach inkblots swam past his face. But even through them he could see the zombies. No longer inches away. No, they had been decimated. Incinerated, blasted to pieces. Some of them – the ones closest to Ken and the others – were still in one piece. But they were dazed. Confused. Skin shredded from bones in awful wounds that would have killed a human and should have killed these things.
They stood. Probably a dozen of the zombies left within range. Still more than enough to kill Ken and Dorcas and Aaron ten times over. Especially since a single bite would finish any of them.
The closest one to Dorcas – a man with a mangled face who wore a bright shirt that said, “ASK ME ABOUT OUR DAILY SANDWICH SPECIALS” under swaths of blood – reached for her. Dorcas leaned back, but couldn’t get far because the things above were still flying over the edges of the roof and the fourteenth floor, only the arc of their momentum keeping the creatures out of range. And Dorcas only had one good hand. No way for her to hold on, lean away, and fight off the things outside and inside the building.
Sandwich Special grabbed at Dorcas. Put a bloody hand on her arm.
Ken moved toward her.
And again the voice: “Don’t move! Just hold on!”
Sandwich Special yanked Dorcas forward, drawing her through the empty hole of the window by her broken arm. She screamed. Cried.
Something cracked.
The entire floor of the office beyond the windows turned from a chaotic shambles of blood and equipment into a shifting quicksand of concrete and steel. The zombie let go of Dorcas, sliding into the hole that had opened up ten feet away. It slid through and disappeared, followed by the other zombies in the room and covered by equipment and bodies.
Dust puffed out of the rooms, as though Sandwich Special were an overzealous illusionist seeking to obscure his his exit.
The entire building shook. Not like it had when Aaron went through the floor. That had been a shudder, a twitch. This was a determined tremor, a seismic event.
“Come on,” said the voice, the same voice that had warned Ken and the other survivors to hang on.
Ken looked over. And there was the kid. There was Christopher. Grinning again.
His backpack was gone.
The building lurched, and Christopher’s feet came off the sill he stood on. His smile wavered, but didn’t disappear. He got his feet back under him and started moving toward the corner of the building again, as though none of what had just happened had been at all unnerving or unusual.
Ken looked over at Dorcas. She was gaping past him, so at least he wasn’t the only one stunned by what was going on.
Aaron just looked on. Waiting to start moving.
Another zombie fell from above. Fell to the horde that was now only about eight feet below them. Ken felt his lips curl as he saw them, crushing one another to get to the few people above. Destroying themselves in their single-minded need to kill.
He turned his head to the left. Started moving.
Time to go.
67
They all stayed as close to the building as they could, trying to be at one with it, even as it shimmied and fractured within. Ken would have gone inside again if there had been an inside to go to. But the entirety of the office they faced was gone, slanting away to an anemone-like pile of rebar, wiring, and building materials.
In the darkness of the hole beyond the windows, Ken thought he saw some of the pieces of the pile moving. Buried bodies, crushed forms that could not be alive but were somehow still animate.
He looked away. Concentrated on sliding a foot at a time toward the corner. On ignoring the bodies casting themselves from on high like angels determined to fall to Hell as fast and as hard as possible.
Dorcas shouted.
“You okay?” called Christopher. He didn’t look back, though. He was almost at the corner.
“I will be if you move faster,” she snapped.
Christopher made a noise that sounded strangely like a chuckle. Ken couldn’t be sure – it was such an out of place sound that cognitive dissonance set in and insisted that it couldn’t be laughter or any of its subsets.
The growling below was so close. Calling them. Insisting without words that Ken just let go and drop down. Each handhold became harder to maintain, each time he slid a foot it got a bit tougher to care if the spot he chose was a good one.
Christopher slipped. Almost went down into the massive tumor below them. Ken wondered if the kid was still smiling.
He didn’t think so.
The kid pulled himself back up. And then he was gone, disappeared around the corner of the building. A moment later, Ken began to move around the corner as well. It would have been an impossible move under normal circumstances – there were no real hand- or footholds, and the windows on either side were too far apart to simply reach around and grab hold. But the building was shifting every second now, and the quoin stones on the corner had pulled apart enough to allow easy movement around the edge of the building.
Ken took a step, moving blind. The corner was actually inverted, jutting into the building and then out again before becoming the adjoining face of the structure. He couldn’t see Christopher, and had no idea what the kid had planned – if anything. He hoped there was something good, though, because the things below were close enough to smell. Blood, sweat. Voided bowels. Desperate madness and a hunger that was beyond alien.
He shimmed across the first angle of the corner. Reached across to the next face of the corner. Put his left hand in a crack between the huge stones of the building. Put his left foot between another.
Dorcas started coming into the recess as well.
The building heaved suddenly. Metal sheared off inside the structure. Another pitch and roll. Aaron shouted.
Then pain. Agonizing, white-hot.
Ken screamed. He looked at his left hand.
The crack he had wedged his hand into had fallen shut. The stones had rejoined, lonely lovers too long apart.
He was stuck fast.
And he felt a hand caress his foot.
68
“What is it? What happened?”
Ken heard the words, but couldn’t answer. Everything he had, everything he was, was focused on the nova of pain at the end of his left arm.
“What happened?” Same words, different tone. The first time it was Dorcas, asking him. This time it was Aaron, leaning around and asking her.
“He’s caught,” she said. She kicked down. Something snarled.
Ken felt something touching the ragged bottom hem of his pant leg. Didn’t care.
He was whispering. Holding fast to the stones of the building with his right hand, stuck via his left. Whispering.
“Give up, give up, give up, fall down, we all fall down.”
Dorcas smacked him. A quick, almost light slap across the back of the head. It reminded Ken of all his other aches and pains, made him aware that he hurt all over.
