The Rising Ash Saga | Book 2 | Falling Embers

by Westerman, R. G.

  “Come and eat,” one of the women close to me says. I recognize her, but I can’t remember her name. A tight smile rests on her face, but she gestures me toward the fire where a couple of birds spit and sizzle over the flames.

  I follow with obvious hesitance, feeling as if I am walking to the gallows, the way everyone else keeps looking at me. The teenage girls never waiver in their hostile gaze. The man with the knife cuts a chunk of meat off the quail, lays it on one of the scraps of cloth, and hands it to me.

  “We’ve also got some fruit,” the woman says. “They found an orchard not far from here on the last supply run. Apples.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I reply, unsure what else to say. She hands me one. The food tastes good and I eat without a care of the others.

  Thorn approaches, having passed off the waterskins to one of the others. “You okay?”

  “I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.” I pick clean one of the bones and toss it aside.

  He chuckles. “You haven’t really.”

  One of the girls suddenly points toward the gate, her eyes and mouth wide and frozen in horror. I turn to where she indicates, only to see the zombies standing in an unnaturally straight line, shoulder to shoulder, the space between them no more than about six inches.

  The usual jerky shuffle has stopped. They just stand there, each turned directly toward the farmhouse.

  Almost immediately, Ezekiel appears at the door, seeking us out and rushing toward me. He holds something in his extended hand, something small.

  “What are they doing?” he all but shouts, as he waves the item towards us. He glances back and forth between us and the zombies. “What are they doing?”

  “They’re standing still,” Thorn answers. “Why are they standing still? What did you do, Eze?”

  “I think I found the frequency. Watch.” He jams his fingernail into some near-invisible slot in the device, twisting it. As he does, the creatures outside the fence suddenly break their odd formation, returning to their mindless shuffle.

  “How did you do that?” I ask. “What is that thing?”

  “This,” he brandishes the device, which appears to be a small, coin-shaped item, “is what we pulled out of your head.”

  Thorn bristles. “Eze, what the hell…”

  “No, it’s okay,” I say, leaning in to have a closer look. “I want to see it.”

  He hands me the item, cold in the palm of my hand. I peer at it, tracing the pad of my thumb over the matte black surface covered with tiny ridges.

  Absently, my other hand reaches up to the back of my head, running lightly over the forming scar, already surrounded by a prickly new growth of my hair.

  “This was in my head…” I murmur.

  We stand in a circle, the three of us, staring down at the device in wonder.

  “How does it work?” Thorn asks, tossing his head toward the zombies hovering outside the gate.

  “So, check this out.” Ezekiel pulls from his pocket a tiny screwdriver, just the right size to manipulate one of the ridges. He takes the disc, and presses, twisting it in a barely perceptible movement. Once again, the monsters stand stock still. “When I turn it here, they do this.”

  “What else can they do?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to fiddle with it.” He twists it again.

  All of a sudden, a tightness consumes my head, as if a metal band is squeezing my skull. I press my fingers against my temples, shutting my eyes against the pressure.

  “Whoa, what is it?” Thorn asks as he steadies my elbow. “Is it one of your headaches?”

  “No, it’s different than that,” I say. “I don’t quite know.”

  “Oh my god,” Fairlight says as she approaches. “Look.”

  On the other side of the fence, Penny stands facing towards us, the others haphazardly lined up behind her. Her decomposed face appears thin, gaunt, nothing more than a skull wrapped in a thin layer of skin.

  The remarkable thing is her position, one hand lifted to her head, fingers extended, appearing to press into her temple. Her other arm is bent at a slight angle, at her side.

  Her positioning mirrors my own, down to the minutest detail. When I lower my arm, she lowers hers. My arm, resting against Thorn’s hand, carries the same angle as hers.

  “Do something else,” Ezekiel says, his lips twitching, eyes bright.

  I lower my arms.

  She lowers hers.

  I step forward once.

  She does too.

  Her movements are not the herky-jerky motions of the undead. Rather, she carries herself with smooth motions, similar to those of the living.

  “That’s it,” Ezekiel declares. “That’s the frequency!”

  “The what?” Fairlight asks.

  “Upstairs, I had the thing tuned into the radio upstairs. It matches up with some of the channels, you see? Every time I switched it, I could connect it to one of the channels. That is, until I couldn’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

  “See, I happened to be able to see them out the window. When I turned it this last time, that’s when the zombies went into the straight line. And just now, when we clicked it again, they started mirroring you.”

  “I’m still not sure I understand.”

  “The frequency somehow matches up with you.”

  “How can that be?” Fairlight shakes her head. “Frequencies? What are you saying?”

  Ezekiel rolls his eyes, his enthusiasm slowing as he realizes the rest of us are just not as smart as him. “The human body puts off an electrical frequency, usually somewhere between sixty and seventy megahertz. This device, depending on the setting, emanates at various frequencies.”

  “And this is the frequency that connects me to them?” I ask.

  “Yes. So it would seem.”

  “So, she was controlling me, with that thing in my head?”

  “Perhaps. My theory is your headaches were caused when she adjusted the frequency from her location.”

  “I see.”

  “Look!” one of the teenage girls shouts, pointing toward the zombies, towards Penny. “Look! She’s okay!

  Fairlight runs to the girl, grabbing her hands in hers and attempts to quiet her. “It’s not what it looks like,” she states firmly.

  “Let her in!” the girl wails. “Let her in the gate! She’s better now! Don’t you see?”

  The girl flails, fighting against Fairlight’s grasp. Her friend attempts to console her, whispering small words. But the girl wrenches away, managing to escape and making a sprinting dash toward the gate.

  Her youth and adrenaline give her enough speed that she gets ahead of everyone, slipping through the inner gate with relative ease.

  “Penny, don’t,” I whisper.

  Before anyone can stop the girl, she pulls open the outer gate, launching herself toward Penny. Ezekiel tries, but none of us can get to her fast enough.

  I focus hard, doing my best to mentally push them back, to shield her from the monsters, but I am still too weak.

  The girl rushes forward, her arms outstretched, her dark hair sticking to her tear-streaked cheeks.

  As soon as she gets close enough to Penny, close enough to grab her up into her arms, she laughs, as one does returning to a long-lost friend. The sound erupts from her, a mix between crying and mirth and madness.

  Penny bites into her neck, severing her artery immediately, blood erupting between her lips and the girl’s neck. The girl dies laughing.

  As soon as the blood hits the air, the other zombies frenzy, swarming them, laying into the two of them. They rip the girl to shreds before she even hits the ground. Nothing more than a corpse of blood and bones.

  The other two stand watching from the inside of the fence, unable to stop the horror happening before them. The only remaining sound is the sickening crunching of flesh and the whimpering cries of the girl’s two friends, fingers curled into the chain link.

  One of them turn
s, seeking me out among the gathered few.

  “You!” she shouts. “You’re the one who brought them here. You made this happen! This is all your fault!”

  My instinct wants to strike out at her, to lash out at the attack focused on me, but her words sink into me. She is not wrong.

  All of this, not just Penny, not just the others, but all of it. The Fall of Humanity happened because of me. By the mere act of being born, coming into the world, the sequence of events leading to today would never have begun.

  The virus would have died out, along with my mother. Perhaps Dr. Donovan would have tried to replicate it, but without my blood she would have failed.

  She rants on as her remaining friend feebly attempts to pull her away. Fairlight and Ezekiel silently approach the girls, shepherding them away from me to the far side of the garden.

  The girl finally collapses into her friend’s arms, her rambling words giving way to grief-stricken weeping.

  “She’s right,” I say.

  “Ash, don’t think like that.” Thorn turns to me. I see a thin vertical line between his eyebrows.

  “But she is right. I shouldn’t have come here.”

  He shakes his head. “You had to. What about--?”

  “Yeah, I got what I came for. Now it’s time for me to go. That much is clear.”

  He falls silent, his eyes never leaving my face.

  “Help Fairlight get everyone back over the mountains. Get them back to SeaHaven. I’ve got to finish this.”

  He reaches for me, tracing the back of his fingers along my cheek. As much as I want to lean into this feeling, I pull away. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

  He does not respond. I make my way to the gate, feeling everyone’s gaze on me. The gathered few are largely silent.

  I don’t turn back to look at any of them but keep my back turned as I open the gate. First one, then the other. When I turn to close the outer gate, I allow myself a quick glance, taking in the view of Fairlight, Ezekiel on the far right of the crowd, and Thorn, over by the house, where I had left him alone, his eyes cast toward me with something akin to pity.

  I close the gate with a loud metal clang.

  I feel certain I will never see any of them again.

  Twenty

  We’ve been walking for three days, the land stretching out in all directions around us. I smell water close by.

  It feels strange how my senses have increased with each passing day. Every morning I feel as if I have to do a sensory inventory just to see what I’m capable of.

  I’m beginning to understand just how drawn these creatures are to their base needs, their ability to seek out fresh meat, living or dead. In a similar way, I find my own senses tweaking to my physical needs: water, heat, shelter, whatever food I come across.

  Sometimes, the creatures closest to me mimic my movements if I am gathering firewood or shielding my eyes from the sun. They reach for phantom objects in front of them or lift a hand to their forehead, until I put my own down, all of us acting out this macabre salute.

  Penny stays close by, now and then fading into the crowd, but always turning up again before much time goes by. The sun sits midway between the apex and the horizon by the time we reach the stream, not much more than a trickle across the edge of the plain, surrounded by small, twig-like trees.

  “Okay,” I say out loud, speaking to myself or to the creatures. I know they don’t understand me, but speaking makes me feel better, at any rate. “This should do it. This is a good spot right here.”

  A few of them reply with the funny grunt sound they make sometimes. Perhaps nothing more than the air flowing through the decaying cavities of their throats.

  I hang my backpack on the strongest of the tree branches closest to the stream, before leaning down to the water’s edge. I scoop up handfuls to my mouth, refreshing and cold, drawing in as much as I can to pacify my thirst.

  I also splash a bit on my arms and face. Glancing at the sun, I calculate we still have a good chunk of time before dark. Might as well try this out to see if it works.

  “Okay, creatures,” I say, turning toward my horde. “It’s time for practice. Everyone ready?”

  Their only response is blank stares and shuffling in place.

  “Okay, let’s give this a try.”

  First, I close my eyes, focusing my concentration. The connection feels slight at first, just a tickle around the edges of my mind.

  I feel a resistance from them stemming from their animal selves, the void where humanity once lived. Within seconds, I feel their hunger, raging beyond understanding, a voiceless need which can never be quenched.

  “There you are,” I whisper.

  Now I reach out just a little bit more, first strengthening the line between myself and the creatures closest to me. At first, the connection nearly overwhelms me, but I push past it.

  One by one, they connect. To me, to each other. As the link grows and strengthens, we become a hive mind, equally yoked from where I stand to the far outer edges of the horde. Their hunger becomes mine, and my drive propels their actions.

  Softly I open my eyes with a slow, careful exhale. At the same moment, I am nearly knocked over by the breath of a thousand zombies.

  Ah yes, I must remind myself to be careful of my actions if they are copying me.

  I raise my right arm. They mirror me without hesitation. Lifting my left arm brings the same response.

  I try different motions now, lifting one leg, then the other. Crossing my arms, bending at the waist. They all follow along, an assemblage of marionettes with tattered flesh and clothing fluttering against bones.

  “Well alright then. Who wants to level up?” With this. I take out my blade, mainly just to have a grip on a weapon, swiping my arm out in front of me. as if fending off an attacker.

  They follow the movement, each of them copying me down to the detail of my curved fingers. I place my knife back into the holster at my belt. They do so as well. Perfect. One more test.

  With a quick motion, I flatten myself to the ground, keeping my eyes cut to the side to watch them. The dust settles around them. They look almost camouflaged against the ground. Good. Exactly what I was going for.

  This next step requires a bit of concentration, still feeling every tendril of their mental connection. I stand up, forcing my actions to remain separate from theirs, hoping against hope they remain where they are.

  By the time I make it to my feet, I open my eyes, unsure of what I will see. I am met with the whole of the horde, lying on the ground just as I hoped.

  “Excellent,” I whisper.

  Now I reach out once more. This time focusing on an individual. I find Penny, still there, somewhere toward the middle of the group.

  I bid her to stand, just her. No one else. When I open my eyes, there she is in her yellow faded dress. From this distance, she almost looks just like a real girl. Between us, the rest of the horde remains lying, unmoving on the ground.

  “Bingo! Good job, grunts,” I say. “We’ll pick this up again tomorrow.”

  Ever so carefully, I release the link between us all, leaving them to their mindless shuffling. Some of them wander off as I set up camp.

  My curiosity gets the best of me once I’m done, and I decide to follow. I double-check the security of my camp, planted right up against the edge of the creek, not much more than a pile of rocks. Satisfied, I slip into the nearest cluster of creatures as they amble by.

  Over the nearest hill, we find our way to a wandering pack of horses, healthy and untouched by the sickness. I think for a moment about Mare, feeling a twinge of sadness at her memory. Most likely, she is gone from this world by now. Perhaps I’ll never know.

  One of the horses had fallen, having broken its leg in a hidden gap covered in overgrown grass. It thrashed against the ground, the whites of her panicked eyes rolled toward the oncoming threat.

  The zombies fall upon her without abandon, ripping flesh from her bones even as she screams against the
pain. I stand back, letting them have their way, trying hard to ignore the cries of the dying creature, until, after far too many minutes, she falls mercifully silent.

  I must do something to calm the gnawing of my own empty stomach. No squirrels or birds worth hunting had crossed my vision in days, one of the drawbacks of being the queen bee of a zombie horde, I guess.

  I had seen the shell of a convenience store about a half a mile back, grown over with tendrils of vines. I had enough daylight to make it there and back.

  If I admitted it, I could have joined them in feeding on that horse. The deep hunger had never gone away. Going to the convenience store was a conscious decision, one I made every moment of every day, for as long as I can remember.

  The store is nothing more than three walls, a gaping hole where a glass door once stood. I step over shards of yellowed glass to get inside.

  The fallen shelves appear bare. except for a few cans. Some kind of meat apparently. Cans are good. They last forever.

  I pile the few findings into my backpack. Luckily, these have the peel-back metal tab. The last one I open and scoop out the insides, careful not to cut my fingers against the sharp edges. A bit stale, but the boost of protein feels good to my depleted system.

  Surrounded by these remnants of this fallen world, I wonder how they even survived as long as they did. All I see is shadows.

  I can’t help but recall the marketplace back at SeaHaven, how lively and vibrant the place seemed compared to this place. Satisfied with my haul, I tuck my pack over my shoulder and head back. Now that I’m away from the horde, I spotted a few birds here and there. But hunting takes time, and time is something I don’t have.

  When I return to camp, I find the horde spread out. They have stripped the poor horse down to the bones. The smell leaves a bit to be desired, but rotting flesh cannot be escaped in a world such as this. One gets used to it, I guess.

  I start up the fire, waiting until it gets good and hot. The setting sun blazes the same color as the sparks floating into the twilight.

  After my makeshift meal of roasted can-meat, I consider setting up my bed in the branches of the tree. But I glance around at my ragtag group of allies, aimlessly shuffling and occasional groans of misplaced air passing through rotting windpipes. They won’t bother me. Of this I am certain.