Staring at the sky.
Both utterly motionless.
He had seen this before. Every time the monsters came, every time the zombies closed, the girls changed. They – along with their mother and Buck - had been captured by the zombies. But they hadn’t been killed, hadn’t been bitten.
They had been taken. Dragged to the top of a building, swaddled in some kind of strange cocoon.
And what had happened there?
No one knew. None of them could remember.
The adults hadn’t shown any effects. But the girls kept shifting between what Ken thought of as normal and this strange “other” state. Sometimes they almost seemed to hope for the Change, to wish to be taken. Sometimes they even seemed to help the zombies.
And when Lizzy had spoken….
Ken shuddered. Thinking of her little voice, speaking not toddler words but saying clearly, “You are not family. You are renegades.”
Sally seemed to mitigate the effect. The snow leopard stood near them now, but even he couldn’t stop it from happening completely, it seemed.
Ken’s heart dropped out of him. Fell right to the center of the earth. His girls….
Maggie’s voice snapped him back to the world.
“Ken? You there? Ken, dammit.”
A measure of her fear that she had cursed.
He moved toward her. Grabbed her wrists. “I’m here,” he said.
Maggie sobbed. “Oh, thank you,” she said. “Thank you, God.”
Buck and Christopher writhed. Ken couldn’t be sure if they were congratulating him, cursing him for taking so long, or simply moving for movement’s sake. Regardless, both looked terrible. Buck’s hair and scalp hung to his skull in loose, oozing strips where zombies had tried to yank him and Hope bodily out of a bus window by his hair alone – only Buck’s incredible will to protect Ken’s daughter had saved them. Ken thought he still saw yellow bone peeking through in a few spare spots above the big man’s eyebrows. And Christopher looked little better, with a busted-up nose and a severe laceration on his cheek, arms raked from wrists to shoulders.
But all those were old wounds. Ken had already seen them. Now, bound to the top of the train, both looked even more battered and bruised: apparently they hadn’t come up here without some struggle.
The temperature of Ken’s blood rose a bit higher.
Back to his wife. She was tied with the same plastic cuffs that had bound him. And while he had managed to loose himself by pounding the things to pieces, he didn’t think he could pull the same trick without breaking her wrists as well.
He pulled off her blindfold. She blinked against the sudden flood of light.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
He kissed her. It was sweet. He hoped it wasn’t their last.
The train lurched under them.
“You better,” she said as they separated.
He looked up.
The train engines were growing louder.
But the zombies had almost reached the final locomotive engine.
Please, God, make them slow up. Somehow, slow them down.
He shifted his thoughts to the things themselves.
Give us a BREAK, dammit!
The train engines grew louder.
But it didn’t matter. They hadn’t moved fast enough to outpace the zombies before. And he knew they wouldn’t move fast enough to get away now.
46
Ken ran over the flat top of the engine toward the front of the train. Leaped over his daughters. Jumped to the ridge of metal that partially hid the front engine from view.
The rear of the lead engine had two doors leading into what he supposed was the cockpit – or driving area, or whatever they called it. He didn’t care. All that mattered was that the doors were open. One was on either side of the train, with a set of stairs leading downward so that the engineer and other crew could get into the cab.
Ken could see Elijah. The big man was seated at the right side of the small room, his hands resting on a pair of levers, moving every so often.
He also saw Theresa.
Like Elijah, Theresa had appeared – seemingly out of nowhere – to rescue Ken and his friends. Like Elijah, she had turned on them. Had turned on his children. Had, with Aaron’s help, taken them hostage for some still-unknown reason that might well involve his girls’ death.
She also was dressed in “Boise Police” body armor, a gas mask dangling from her neck. She had red hair and a few extra pounds that rounded out her body. She would have been plumply attractive were it not for the fact that she was a killer-in-waiting. That and, perhaps, the thick scar that curled its way around her neck and made her voice sound only a little less gruff than the growl that followed the survivors everywhere.
Theresa was on the left of the train. Standing with arms crossed. Gun clearly riding on her hip. Elijah also had a sidearm, though Ken couldn’t see his.
He also couldn’t see Aaron. He guessed the cowboy was in there, riding out of sight behind the bulkhead.
That would make what came next harder.
But Ken had no doubt he would do it. Everyone – all his friends, his family – depended on him. Doubt would only get them killed.
He jumped.
He landed with the solid thud he had come to expect in traveling across car after car. His feet hit the second-to-top tread on the stairs to the cab. His hands came down firmly on the safety rails on either side.
Elijah glanced back. His face tautened. “He’s here.”
Aaron slid into the doorway. “Ken, we don’t have time for this.”
“No, we don’t.” Ken jerked a chin behind him. “They’re going to get on the train. I need the others loose.”
Theresa stepped into the doorway behind Aaron. “Are you nuts? No way.”
Aaron looked at Ken. Impassive.
“Now, Aaron. Or we all die.”
Ken turned to Theresa and took a knife from her belt. It was six inches long. The edge glittered: a razor that sliced the light in the cab.
Ken tensed.
Aaron tossed the knife to him. Ken snatched it out of the air.
“What are you doing?” Theresa screamed.
Aaron reached behind the bulkhead and came back with a tool. A heavy wrench.
“Let’s go get ‘em,” he said to Ken.
47
When Aaron said that, Ken was reminded for a moment of Dorcas. The farm woman who had come along on an insane trip to save a bunch of strangers. Who had saved him time and again. And why? When asked, she merely said, “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
She had died for them. For all of them.
No. Not died. Worse. Changed. One of them now.
And now Aaron was helping again. Why?
Ken didn’t understand. Didn’t know what was happening – not only in the greater world outside the train, the world that had turned inside out and seemed hell-bent on imploding, but in the much smaller world of the people he knew and thought he knew. What was Aaron’s endgame? What were Elijah and Theresa trying to do?
No time to figure it out now.
Ken began to turn back to the cab doors.
“I can’t let you.” Theresa slid her gun from its holster. Aimed it at Ken.
“Theresa, dammit –“ Aaron began.
“We don’t know what’s happening, Aaron. We already decided that –“
“That’s right, we don’t know,” snapped Aaron. “And until we do, no one dies. No one.” He glared at her. Then turned away, dismissing both her and her weapon. “Go, Ken.”
Ken turned away as well. His back twitched. He felt like he had a bright red circle painted in the middle of it.
It was an easy jump to the engine’s walkway.
It was also easy to see the zombies loping along the side of the train.
A few had made it to the side of the last engine.
Ken ran back to the middle of the center engine. Jumped up again. Numb to everything but what he had
to do.
He didn’t go to Maggie. Instead went to Buck. He sawed at the big man’s wrist cuffs. The second they came loose Buck tore his blindfold and gag loose. Some skin came off along with the blindfold, a few bits of gray hair. He didn’t scream, didn’t make a noise. Ken wondered if that was life now – pain such a part of things it wasn’t worth even noticing.
Like Maggie, Buck blinked in the sunlight, but said nothing. Just stared at Ken as he moved to his daughters. He snapped each of their bonds with one cut of the knife. Then looked back at Buck.
“Get them into the front,” he said.
Buck didn’t question. He just nodded. Then grabbed the girls. He tucked one under each arm. Ken had been injured, out of it for a few days. And during that time Buck had somehow come to view himself as a protector. A friend or favored uncle.
He would die for these girls.
He moved to the end of the engine’s flat top, then sat and swung his legs over and dropped down to the walkway as carefully as he could.
Ken had thought about sending Maggie, but he didn’t trust Theresa, and he figured Buck had a better chance against her. Not to mention Elijah. Buck was the only one of them nearly big enough to go mano a mano with someone that size.
Buck’s head swung back and forth as he oriented himself. He visibly started as he saw the zombies. Then turned and ran to the cab.
Sally, who had been resting near the girls, dropped down silently with Buck.
Ken moved to Maggie next. Loosed her. “Go with him,” he said.
She shook her head. Staring behind her. Knowing what was coming. “We have to stop them.”
“I know,” he said. “But you have nothing to do that with.”
“Ken –“
“Go!”
He shoved her. Then practically shoved her off the top of the engine. Down to the walkway.
She glanced up at him.
He nodded at her.
She touched his foot – the only part of him she could reach. Then ran.
Ken ran back to Christopher. Aaron was already there. Christopher’s wrists were lashed to a handle that jutted out of the metal of the engine. Aaron put a jaw of the wrench between Christopher’s bonds and the metal. Levered up. The plastic popped. Christopher yelled through his gag. He ripped it off.
“Ow, that hurt!” he hollered. Then he tore off his blindfold. “Don’t you….” His voice died as he saw what was coming.
As the first zombie put its hand onto the top of the engine.
At the same time, a shadow drew across the sun. The dark clouds that had been hanging overhead since Ken made his escape from the boxcar finally shuddered and opened up.
Rain began to fall.
48
Aaron dove down to one side of the engine.
Ken thought the cowboy was abandoning them. But there was a sharp clang and the sound of a metal door opening. Sounded like Aaron popped a lock of something with his wrench. Then he tossed something at Christopher. A crowbar.
“You take the other side!” Aaron shouted at Christopher. He switched his gaze to Ken. “You’re top.”
Ken and Christopher moved immediately. The last time Ken had seen the younger man, he had been nearly crippled by despair. He had seen his baby, a baby he thought dead in a hospital collapse, changed not only to a zombie but to one of the ones that was metamorphosing into something hideous and even more alien than the others. Worse, he had attacked it with an axe before realizing who it was. Ken had worried Christopher was broken, mind and soul.
But he moved now, without hesitation or apparent fear. The only difference this Christopher and the old one was that the young man’s grin – always present before – was gone. A twice-broken nose (courtesy of Ken) and a sliced cheek and arms (courtesy of zombies) had failed to strip him of that smile. But now his smile and his humor had fled. Now he looked serious, almost expressionless.
Perhaps not broken, but something had changed in him. Something had died.
Ken only hoped they wouldn’t all die in a more physical manner.
Christopher dropped over the side. On Ken’s left. Aaron on his right. Both men moved forward, ready to hold off the zombies that loped toward them on the sides of the train.
Ken faced the one that had made it to the top.
Raindrops plunked down on the top of the engine. The water darkened the metal in near-perfect circles the size of quarters. Then the water-darkened circles joined as the top of the engine drenched.
The zombie growled at Ken.
Ken screamed. Ran across dark water toward the hunter.
49
It happened faster than Ken could have expected. The storm brought no lightning, but the next moment seemed to happen in a series of flashes, as though cracks of brightness illuminated only every other instant in the next explosion of activity.
The zombie, jumping at him…
… Ken, juking…
… the train, jerking as it prepared to move…
… the thing sliding a bit, losing purchase on the slippery metal for a critical second…
… Ken’s foot kicking out…
… the thing’s snarl…
(GIVE UP! GIVE IN!)
… his foot connecting…
… the thing’s knee bending sideways…
… it fell…
… crackles as its knee righted itself, impossibly straightened…
… the thing back on its feet…
… and Ken screamed and buried the knife in its throat.
The zombie didn’t seem to mind the knife. It grabbed Ken’s shoulders with piston-fingers. His shoulders groaned. The thing pulled toward him. Its teeth clicked.
Ken resisted. His hands still on the knife that was buried in the thing’s neck. He pushed away as hard as he could. Blood washed over his hands. Warm. Dark bits like it had started to clot in the thing’s veins. The rain carried some of the gore away, but not all of it, and not fast enough. Ken shivered in spite of himself.
The zombie’s teeth were a foot away. It could pull harder than Ken could push.
Ken kept pushing, but now he shifted part of his force to a sideways motion. Grinding the knife to the left. Digging. The knife was buried to the hilt in the thing’s neck. Which meant it had to be sticking out the back.
He twisted. Twisted.
The thing was inches away. He could smell its breath.
Twist.
The thing dropped.
Ken wasn’t fooled. He had managed to sever the spine, but he had seen this before. It wasn’t dead. In a moment the spine would heal, the thing would start twitching, then muscle control would return and it would be as deadly as ever.
He hoisted it to a shoulder.
It was already shuddering. Like it was willing itself to motion. Its head – above the level of the cut – still had a modicum of control. Its teeth still clicked together, and Ken was careful to avoid them as he carried it to the side of the engine.
Rain fell harder. Water bounced off the train, like even the elements had joined the enemy and were trying to wash the last vestiges of humanity away.
Below him, Christopher was swinging away with the crowbar, barely managing to keep one of the things at bay. He connected, shattering the thing’s jaw. The lower half of the zombie’s face shifted to the side. The sight gladdened Ken, since he figured a zombie with a jaw a good ten inches out of alignment would have serious trouble biting.
The jaw slid back into place.
The thing jumped at Christopher. And Christopher hadn’t recovered from his swing yet.
50
Ken tossed the twitching thing off his shoulder. He felt it scrape him on the way down. Prayed it wasn’t a bite.
Apparently not. No blood burst from his pores, no need to scream and devolve to pure predation. He felt a sudden jolt of pain through his torso, but that was all.
The zombie – spasming, almost epileptic – fell. It hit the one that was racing toward Christopher, and both tumbled
to the walkway.
Ken had only bought Christopher a second or two, but Christopher used his time perfectly. He swung the crowbar down as hard as he could. Again. Two heads burst open. Pink sludge exploded outward. The zombie on the bottom – the one that had been attacking Christopher – now turned its attention to the thing on top of it. That zombie shuddered as control finally returned to its body and it began batting at its once-fellow.
Both had gone mad. Had lost that will that bound them in a common purpose. They no longer hated all humanity. Now they simply hated.
The two rolled off the side of the train. Spun down the gully in a flurry of teeth and arms and legs. Hands and feet kicking and tearing, blood flowing and bone breaking.
Two more zombies took their places at the rear of the engine. Christopher dropped to a crouch.
His grin was back. Not the same ain’t-life-a-kick grin he had worn before, though. This was an angry smile, the kind of expression Ken suspected a soldier with nothing to lose might wear.
He heard something on the other side. A shriek of pain. Aaron.
Ken ran back across the top of the engine. He slid the last feet, knowing instinctively that he had to come down to the walkway, and come down hard.
The water sprayed under him. Separated in twin curtains of white, like he was an angel of God paving the way for Moses and his people to cross over to safety.
But there was no safety on the other side of the hood. His feet crashed down on top of the zombie that had trapped Aaron against the side rail. Aaron’s wrench was in the thing’s mouth, but he was far from safe. Black acid was dripping around its mouth. Melting the wrench. Melting the thing’s own face. But a few drops had also landed on Aaron’s legs. And Ken had seen before how much even a drop of the concentrated solvent hurt on human skin.
The wrench was bending, about to break, when Ken came down on the thing’s back. His left hand went around the thing’s forehead, yanking it back, and his right jabbed the knife sideways through its neck. He levered it toward him and the knife slammed through flesh and blood, exploding out the back of the thing’s neck.
The Colony: Shift (The Colony, Vol. 5) Page 9