Still, one of the things that Christopher found strangest and most disconcerting was the plate-like growths that had begun enveloping the heads and bodies of some of the creatures. Thick and tough-looking, the black growths sprung out of their skin at random. Some of the beasts' eyes had been completely covered – which hadn't affected their ability to hunt; they had just used some kind of sonar to find prey. Other zombies' ears were obscured, and a few had their heads utterly enclosed in a cocoon of thick black armor.
Now Christopher wondered if he was finally seeing a reason for the change as the ground where Aaron had been standing broke open. The mottled, misshapen head of a zombie pushed out of the ground. Straight out of Night of the Living Dead or any of a thousand other zombie flicks, only this was real. Terrifying, awesome, real.
The zombie that pushed out of the ground wasn't the simple, rotted creature of a Romero flick. Those disgusting armor plates covered most of its head, and even in the darkness Christopher could see they were moving. Spinning like they were set into tracks, some kind of organic ball bearing mechanisms. The dark crags of the growths rained dirt as the thing pushed through the surface. A moment later it had its hands – also covered with the strange, spinning growths – on the ground and was pulling itself out of its burrow.
It was digging. Built to dig. Every single cheesy zombie movie Christopher had ever seen flashed past the front of his mind in an instant: a thousand hands pushing through fresh grave-earth, a thousand bodies pulling forth from wet mud like maggots spawned in the soil.
Aaron had talked to him on the train. Had told him that the stories they told of zombies were evidence of times the things had tried to come before. That the stories – the dead rising up, the deadly bites, the fast zombies and the slow – they were all evidence of previous invasions. Mental intrusions either aborted or repelled by some unknown mechanism.
What? How did we win then? How can we win now?
And seeing this, the creature with whirring, spinning blades all over its body, a tunneling creature that now yanked itself free from beneath their feet, Christopher believed. Aaron had been right.
How can we win? How can we win against this?
He backpedaled. The thing shot through the earth, moved so fast it was more swimming than digging. Just doing the strangest breaststroke ever through a dirty lake that Christopher, Aaron, and Amulek were holy enough to walk upon.
The thing rose up, half of its form free, then three-quarters. Then it toppled, writhing like a worm. Its arms were partially fused with its trunk, its legs were joined by that yellow muck from hips to knees. It wasn't a thing meant for speed on land, only speed through it.
Thank God.
Christopher didn't feel relieved, though. He felt sick. More so when he realized that the thing hadn't pulled free from some shallow grave. The hole it had pulled itself out of wasn't a single body's length in depth or width. Instead, it fell away to nothing, an oubliette that dropped directly to the earth's core.
Or, worse, a tunnel.
For what? What else is in there?
As if he didn't know. And when he threw away the lie, the foolish hope that there was no tunnel, that these things hadn't found him again, that was when he heard it. Another thing heard with mind rather than with ears. No sound, just feeling. No thought, just despair.
(give up
give in)
The feeling was low, but present. Real.
"Coming," said Aaron. The cowboy's voice was low, and it almost sounded like he was promising to do something. Like he wasn't saying "They're coming," but "I'm coming." Promising to do what they said. To give up, give in.
To join them.
Christopher realized he had stepped toward the digger zombie. That he was nearly within reach of its stunted hands. What would they do if they caught him? What would hands that could crush rock do to flesh?
Give up….
Give in….
He stepped forward again.
The digger flopped around, looking like a three-way cross between a dying trout, the world's biggest turd, and a garbage disposal that had exploded. It would have been funny if it weren't for the fact that Christopher was about to be in range of its grasp.
And he suddenly didn't care.
Give up….
GIVE IN….
Another step. The armored hands moved toward him as he moved toward them.
40
The thing in front of Christopher moved slowly on land.
The thing behind him moved fast. So fast.
A hand clamped around his neck. Yanked him off-balance. Another hand flew at his face. Christopher tried to twist away, but he was powerless against the assault. Spun like a baby in the hands of a giant. A huge hand swinging toward him…
… and pinching his thrice-broken nose.
He screamed and punched his attacker. Amulek danced out of range, moving with that same effortless grace that characterized Aaron's motions, Sally's motions. The kid was another predator. Someone not to be trifled with.
And he had just saved Christopher's life.
The call of the zombies receded behind a white curtain of pain, a veil of tears that freely overran Christopher's cheeks. He couldn't stop crying, no matter how much he blinked or how many times he ran his filthy sleeve over his face.
The pain throbbed, and with each throb it seemed to amplify, to magnify. It utterly enveloped him.
And damn, it was sweet.
"Thank you," gasped Christopher. He could barely speak, and that was ecstasy, too. Because he could speak, if only a little. Still struggling, which meant he was still alive. "Thank you." Another flurry of blinks. "Let's get a new way of saying 'look out,' okay?"
Still struggling, still speaking, still making jokes.
Hell, yes. Still alive.
The thing on the ground twisted toward him. Found Christopher out of reach, so it dipped its head down and in moments was half-buried again. Moving away this time.
Where? Why?
No answers.
"We might want to get going," said Aaron.
That was a sensible suggestion, but Christopher was at a loss. Trying to ignore the ever-closer feel –
(Give up… GIVE IN….)
– of the zombies was almost the limit of what he could attend to. How could he try to keep Aaron from following him back to the shelter?
And should he even try?
(Give up… GIVE IN….)
They were coming.
No. Not coming. They're not coming at all.
Low whines erupted all around.
The ground near Christopher's feet humped up, broke.
Another one of the zombies.
Another.
Still more.
Not coming. Not coming at all.
They're already here.
And they were everywhere.
41
The ground beneath his feet surged wildly. He was riding a wave. His mind fell back to Manhattan Beach. Four months in his teens when he had stayed at a very exclusive boarding school.
The first month had been a stunningly uninteresting one. Classes full of uniformed boys all interested in nothing but money – theirs, their parents', the net worth of the boy sitting next to them – and teachers interested less in coursework than in coaxing future favors out of their students.
The second month got exciting. But excitement comes in many shapes, many flavors, many pleasures… and so many pains.
The second month was when Headmaster Albert "Grody" Grossman called him into his office. An imagined slight against one of the boys. Christopher didn't even remember doing it, and soon found out it didn't matter what the slight had been, or whether he had done it or not. It was just an excuse for the headmaster to closet him in the small office.
The secretary was sent to look for Christopher's files. Not just the ones on the computer, but hard copies held in another building, another part of the campus.
He was alone with Headmaster Grossman
. Alone, and soon facedown, screaming, crying.
The third month he discovered surfing. The assaults happened regularly, and he already knew that telling his parents would be a waste of time. Mother and Father were busy. Too busy to listen, and much too busy to care.
He went out on the waves. The water felt good on his scratches, his tears. He wept and the sea swallowed him, made him small, too small to catch, too small to touch. Safe in the sea. Safe when he rode the waves.
And now he rode the waves again. Not water but earth, giant mounds hunching up beneath him as minute earthquakes ran up and down the bank of the canal.
His brain found a spare instant to note the one place the earth stood unmarred: the newly turned dirt that marked Ken's grave.
He spun, twisted. Wherever he put his foot down, something was moving. Something chewed up the dirt under his right foot. Something reached out. He whirled back. Fell onto another pile of moving soil.
He surfed. Tried to be small. Tried to be safe.
The fourth month in school he had also surfed. Right up until the last day of spring, the beginning of summer. He left the school early – all the students did. Someone started a fire that ate through most of the campus buildings, including the headmaster's home. Grossman was killed in the flames.
No one ever discovered who did it. Christopher had been sure they would figure out it was him, but police discovered a cache of child pornography in what was left of the headmaster's basement. Pictures that included not only random innocents culled from dark crevices of the 'net, but some who were recognizable as past students.
No one looked too deeply into the "accident" after that.
Sometimes justice could simply be accepted.
Christopher was sent to another school. No more beatings, no more of the far worse things that followed the rulers and canes.
Still no Mother, no Father. Just him.
He burned that school down, too. Almost got caught. Dancing on the edge of flame.
Like now, dancing on the edge of earth, the edge of life.
His right foot came down on a shifting mass. Something bit into his shoe. There was a sound of shearing leather. His foot jerked.
He fell.
One of the things lay in his path. It couldn't reach for him. Couldn't reach with arms pinned to its sides by that mortar-muck the things puked up. But it didn't have to. What need was there of grabbing prey when the merest touch would grind that prey to pieces?
Christopher tried to get his feet under him. Tried to balance. Tried to surf to safety.
Failed.
And no fire to save him this time. Just falling. Falling.
He looked around, hands waving at nothing as he fell from the wave. Fell crashing to doom.
Aaron: twisting away, efficient two-steps and jigs that danced him off mound after mound.
Christopher: Falling.
Falling.
Amulek: the boy silently sliding between the mounds, moving as though he knew where they would appear before they did.
Amulek and Aaron were both were too far to help. Moving away.
The wave was going to kill Christopher. No salvation, only death.
Falling.
Falling.
Fallen.
42
The thing below was all spinning masses of armored flesh, plates of some awful material.
Then the spinning plates split. Something dark in the darkness, blacker than the night.
GIVE UP.
It was a mouth.
Christopher reached out. Trying to stop his fall, to reach for something, anything. To halt a descent into that gaping maw.
GIVE IN.
There was nothing to hold. Just air, and it held him not at all as he clawed his way through it.
His fingers stretched, and suddenly they were inside the thing's mouth. No idea how they got there.
The thing bit down.
43
Christopher expected it to hurt. And it did. But he assumed the pain would come through his fingers, through the knuckles that were in line to be ground and bitten by the disfigured thing's dark teeth.
Instead he felt a searing line of pain along the back of his hand. Felt blood dripping down the sides, around his palm.
He looked at his hand, amazed he still had the ability to do so. Every other person who had been bitten had Changed instantly. Except Ken. Ken had been partially bitten, and Aaron thought that had saved him. Thought that the zombies didn't infect with blood or saliva, but with some mental pulse they focused through their mouths. And Ken hadn't gotten a full dose because he'd only been half-bitten.
Maybe that had happened to Christopher.
But… no. He hadn't been bitten at all.
The pain he had felt was the fletching of one of Amulek's arrows. It had passed over his hand so closely that the feathers at the back had sliced his hand like a knife. The arrow had rammed through the roof of the zombie's mouth, slamming the upper jaw back and inserting itself between the thing's teeth and Christopher's hand at the last second.
The zombie went mad. No longer digging, no longer attacking. It simply began thrashing as the pink muck that passed for its brains splashed out the top of its head where the arrowhead poked out.
Christopher yanked his hand back. The thing below shrieked, then spun and disappeared into the ground, spinning plates chewing up the dirt and then closing the ground behind it.
He stared, dumbstruck.
And, as always, the new world reminded him that stopping was not an option.
44
Amulek spun Christopher around, a look on his face that Christopher didn't recognize.
He's scared.
It made Christopher feel strangely better, to know that the boy had the capacity for normal fear. That he could be moved. Even fear was an important distinction between the humans and the things.
The ground was still welling up around them. Hunching mounds that split obscenely as deformed hands, arms, heads shoved their way through the surface. It was like watching a profane birth, children of the soil who had no parents, no ancestors. They were things of the Now, and existed only for this moment, the moment of the kill.
"Come on," said Aaron. He grabbed Christopher's arm. "We gotta get out of –"
He stopped speaking when Amulek pointed an arrow at his eye. The kid had already shot the arrow he had nocked, but he tossed one of the ones he had in his drawing hand into place, nocked it, and drew the string taut, all in a motion so quick and fast that Christopher could only tell what happened by replaying the motions in his head.
"I don't think he wants you to go with us."
Aaron nodded. He backed away a step.
One of the zombies grabbed the cowboy's boot. Aaron screamed – more surprise than fear or pain – and stamped on it. The thing didn't let go. Something whirred, and now Aaron's scream was tinged by pain. Blood flowed around the zombie's hand, and Christopher realized that the same things that plowed through dirt could also grind through boot leather.
Thwip.
Another arrow. This one pinned the zombie's hand to the ground, passing through it so far that only the fletching showed, the head and shaft buried deep in the earth.
Christopher looked at Aaron's ankle. Bleeding through the boot, but the cowboy was still upright so it couldn't be too bad. "Get back to Theresa," he said. He looked at Amulek. The kid had another arrow nocked, looking at the wriggling worms pushing through the earth all around them. But he glanced up at Aaron when Christopher added, "Don't follow us."
Aaron looked at the arrow beside him. The thing that had grabbed him yanked its hand away and took another swipe at him. Aaron stepped away. "Wouldn't dream of it," he said. He turned and ran down the bank of the canal, leaping and dodging like he was the protagonist of a strangely realistic video game.
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n, even after the world ends I still have to deal with commercials.
Something tugged at Christopher. Amulek. Pulling him back toward safety.
Or perhaps just toward the shelter. Because would that place be safe against these things? What was safe, now?
They ran. They jumped and danced.
And when the dance ended, when the music stopped….
Can't dance forever.
Can't live on the edge of flame forever.
Can't surf forever.
Can't live forever.
45
Only a few fields lay between the canal and the shelter. A couple hundred yards.
It was the equivalent of running from Boise to Chicago. Through a minefield. And the fact that it was dark didn't help anything.
Christopher had never met anyone as surefooted as him. Even Aaron, with skills that bordered on the preternatural, wasn't as good on his feet. Christopher had always felt like his whole body was as easy to deal with as his hand, his fingers. He just told it what to do and it was done. He had done his first backflip when he was twelve – not in school or some gymnastics class, he just felt like doing it and so he did, first try. And no pads or practice mats, he did it on the sidewalk walking to his dorm and it never occurred to him he might fail and fall and hurt or kill himself in the attempt.
Ditto climbing: he had been incarcerated in so many different jails – they called them schools, but most of them were jails, call them what you will – that when he discovered most of them could be escaped if you were willing to dare great enough heights… well, he just did it. No thought, no worries. Just attempt and success.
Even so, running in the dark over ground that swayed and shifted as living things burrowed up from the depths was a near-impossible task. He constantly tripped, constantly slipped. Almost went down a dozen times and only Amulek's firm grip kept him from falling completely.
If that happened there would be no getting up.
Buried.2015.03.04 Page 9
