The return voice was too low to hear. Ken hoped whoever was on the other end of the radio had good news, but The Redhead’s expression clouded.
Not good news.
No such thing as good news anymore.
36
Ken felt himself drawn to one side. Aaron was pulling the group toward a storefront whose window had been broken out. A mannequin wearing a gray dress and a blood-spattered scarf leaned through the window like a drunk who had simply passed out after a particularly intense bender. Aaron’s intent was obvious: get inside, try to find a way through, to escape through the back.
Failing that, it was as good a place for a last stand as any.
The group stumbled with him for a few steps, then Ken felt a competing pull. Not toward the store, but forward again. Toward the zombies that stood before them.
“What are you doin’?” snapped Aaron.
The Redhead answered. “My best to save your ass, cowboy.”
Aaron growled, as though he didn’t like being called a cowboy. Or maybe he didn’t mind it, but didn’t think she had earned the privilege. “You gonna run us straight toward –“
The things hissed. It was the first sound that Ken had heard the undead zombies make. Not a vocalization in the strictest sense, but a sound that brought to mind the rattle of a cornered diamondback.
At the same time, he heard a louder noise. The sound of an engine. A diesel thrum that was louder than he would have expected to hear on Boise’s streets even before the Change. It wasn’t just the loudness of it, either, it was the choppiness of it. It had the rickety crick-crack of an engine that was used not for mileage but for hauling. Something built for more than its ability to get from point A to point B.
The rhythmic clock-tock-crick-crack of the diesel engine got louder. Closer.
The zombies remained silent. But also got closer.
Ken wondered which one would reach them first.
37
The engine arrived. And with it, thirty-foot blades with edges keen enough to slice a ream of paper cleanly in two.
Another curiosity of Boise, but one that Ken had always loved: it was the urban extension of a strictly agrarian community. As such, the buildings and businesses were placed around and among acres of open farmland. It wasn’t unusual for a dentist to have fifty acres of corn as his only neighboring business, or for a Wal-Mart to back up to a working ranch, the smell of livestock drifting over to greet people as they exited with inexpensive items that were “Made in America” even if they were assembled somewhere in Thailand.
Boise was a city of contradictions. Hungering to be taken seriously as a urban center, but unwilling to give up its roots as a farming community. It had a hockey team, an amphitheater for concerts. It also had a large number of kids who took a week or two off school every year to help with the crops.
It had Best Buy for electronics beside Cabella’s where you could buy all your hunting gear.
It had new megaplex theaters alongside old-fashioned places that still showed black and white films.
It had streets where you could see people driving to work in a Lexus or a Honda tricked out to impress, or a Ford or a Jeep tricked out to work.
And, apparently, you could also see people driving John Deere tractor combine harvesters down the middle of the roads.
38
At nearly twenty feet tall and thirty feet wide at its widest point, the great green beast was almost as much of a monster as the things in front of Ken and the other survivors.
Almost.
And, in some ways, more so.
It hove into view, managing to look both ponderous and slow and at the same time faster than Ken would have believed. Bright green, the only swatches of color the yellow John Deere symbol on sides and front and a red fire extinguisher clamped to the side of the huge cab.
John wasn’t a farmer any more than he was a hunter. But you couldn’t grow up in a place like Boise without at least knowing a few basics. So he knew that this was a combine harvester that could be used to harvest a variety of grains. He also knew that the long thing on the front that looked like a bingo cage lined with Ginsu knives was the thresher, and it epitomized “things you don’t want to walk in front of.”
The driver was barely visible through the glare that splashed sunlight across the front of the cab. Even at this distance Ken could tell he was huge, a body built like that of a pro wrestler crammed on the bench seat of the thresher. It looked likely that he had never actually gotten into the machine, but rather had been born on the seat and grown to giant manhood right there; that was the only way Ken could fathom him getting inside.
He was also dressed like The Redhead, with what looked like body armor and a gas mask swinging from his tree-trunk of a neck. His skin was black. Not the light brown of so many people that Ken and his friends referred to as “black” or even “African American” if they were still a few years behind the ever-shifting curve of PC designations, but so deep and dark it was almost the color of night.
He was smiling. It was not the carefree smile that Christopher so often wore – or had worn before he attacked his own child in this strangest of wars. No, it was the tight grin of a man about to kill. A smile that Ken had never really seen – not even on Aaron, who kept his emotions under tightest control – but which he recognized instantly. And which he feared.
The huge man was driving the thresher right at the zombies that separated him from the survivors.
The John Deere suddenly leapt forward.
The undead between Ken and the huge harvester finally seemed to take note of the new threat.
They turned to see what had crept up behind them.
They hissed that diamondback-rattler hiss.
39
The blades hit the first of the undead.
Then metal and flesh met.
Metal won.
Metal continued through to bone.
This was a tougher contest, but again metal proved victorious.
Blood flew in high arcs, a splash of red that painted the side of the green and yellow cab. Ken thought almost idly that the thing looked ready for Christmas.
The horde ahead was gone in under two seconds. Not cut down, not blown to pieces the way the RPG had done.
Just gone.
They disappeared into the whirling cyclone blades of the thresher. Some simply flung into the air as mist, others were blended to a pulp and carried along a conveyor to a cylinder that had been angled out so the paste spewed onto the street instead of into the grain bin behind the cab.
In moments all that was left of the undead was grume and a few tiny things that twitched and foamed yellow. Too small to worry about, too tiny to be threats.
The thresher pulled past the kill zone, huge tires riding over the red patch that had once been things that, in turn, had once been people.
The black man reached a massive arm over and pushed open the cab door. The door was mostly clear plastic or some kind of acrylic, and the man threw it open with such force that it warped, bouncing off the cab before he caught it again in a hand the size of a hubcap.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” he screamed. His voice was deeper than he was big, rumbling like tectonic plates about to quake. “Get IN.”
He nodded.
Ken looked over his shoulder and realized that in the sheer shock of the thresher’s appearance, he had forgotten that the undead in front weren’t the only ones.
There were still the ones behind.
The ones that hadn’t stopped chasing them.
The ones that were now only feet away.
40
The row of people slumped toward the thresher.
Ken pushed Maggie ahead. Pushed Buck. Neither resisted. They held the girls, the things that seemed to be at once the most important, fragile, and dangerous part of the group.
Hissing followed them. He wondered if this meant the undead things were changing the way the… infected ones had been doing. The thou
ght terrified him.
If the dead could not only rise up, but learn and change and evolve, what hope for humanity?
He didn’t look back.
Sally fell suddenly behind them. The snow leopard roared, the bellow of a big cat that had marked its prey. Something hissed, then there were low sounds of struggle.
Sally leapt back into view. More blood poured from the wound on his side. He had lost an eye.
He didn’t seem to mind. He ran to Maggie and licked little Liz’s limp foot. He let Hope’s trailing hand fall across his back, then danced back silently to tangle with the undead behind.
More growling, a roar. Hissing.
Maggie was at the idling thresher. She put her hands on the guardrails that ran up either side of the steep ladder-stairs that led to the cab. Pulled herself in. The black man smiled tensely at her, as though even in the midst of a calamity certain niceties must be observed. Ken almost expected him to say, “This is your captain speaking.”
Next was Buck. Maggie shuffled over to give him space on the bench.
And that was it. The cab was full.
No room for anyone else.
The hissing increased.
Sally leapt forward and somehow managed to navigate the ladder.
“The hell is that?” shrieked the driver.
Ken heard Buck and Maggie start to explain, heard bits of “He’s with us,” and “He’s all right” before the huge bear-man – so big he dwarfed even Buck’s six-foot-plus frame – waved them to silence.
He looked over Ken’s head. Then at The Redhead.
“Move, Theresa, move!” he screamed. And there was genuine terror in his gaze.
Terror, but Ken wondered where they were supposed to move to.
41
The Redhead – hard to think about her as a Theresa – jumped onto the thresher, then clambered across the side of the cab as nimbly as Christopher might have done. She gestured to Aaron. “Get him inside!” She pointed at Christopher.
Aaron eyed the cab. “Where should I put him?”
“Anywhere you can fit him!”
Christopher threw off the cowboy’s arm almost angrily. He bounded up the ladder, slammed the cab door shut, and then climbed across the blood-slick outside of the vehicle until he was next to Theresa. He eyed her as though daring her to say something.
She looked almost admiringly at him. Nodded. Admitting his right to be there, Ken thought.
Ken was next. Aaron propelled him halfway up the ladder. Then the cowboy barely made it onto the bottom rung before the thresher leaped forward.
The blades churned again.
They were pointed the wrong direction, but Ken knew that it didn’t matter. This wasn’t an attack, it was an escape.
The things were still coming.
One of them put a hand on Aaron’s work boot. Aaron hooked his left arm – his bad arm – through the handrail. He spun and kicked. The undead thing’s head exploded in red and pink. The thing danced mindless madness, instant and infinite insanity gripping it. It didn’t let go of Aaron, though, and the cowboy was losing his grip.
Ken jumped down a step and aimed his own kick. He wasn’t as expert as Aaron, but all the years of martial arts held him in good stead and he got a good front kick in. Right over Aaron’s shoulder, straight into the thing’s own shoulder. It spun the undead around, tearing it free of Aaron. The monster, the dead thing, was nearly headless, but it somehow sensed it was near to other moving creatures, because it grabbed one of its once-sisters and began tearing huge chunks of flesh from the other undead.
The dead woman it was attacking didn’t even acknowledge it. She kept trying for the thresher as it slowly moved forward. The vehicle had been moving quickly when Ken first saw it, but apparently there had been a bit of momentum involved in its velocity. To get up speed it had to have time.
Not like the zombies. They ran fast from the Change. They killed quickly from the get-go.
The dead woman finally went down when the one Aaron and Ken had kicked ripped the back off her neck. It must have interrupted all signals from head to body because she fell and was still. Her fingers twitched.
Then feet.
She would rise again. Soon.
Ken looked for the next undead.
He kicked at one that was reaching for them. He connected, knocking the thing back. It went to one knee and the driver swerved at the same time. He was undoubtedly trying to miss something in the road, but it was almost a choreographed move. The huge tires of the thresher ground the zombie beneath them. It didn’t rise again. Ken couldn’t even see where it had been: just one more stain on a road filthy from the destruction of the past days.
Aaron was fighting off the things, good hand and both feet a blur. Efficient motions meant not to subdue or still, but to cripple and kill. The moves of a trained soldier.
Or assassin.
Ken glanced at Christopher and Theresa. The redheaded woman was holding to a horizontal bracket on the side of the thresher’s cab. She was holding herself up out of reach of the undead, but every so often she would drop down and land a pair of heavy black boots in a forehead or face. Sometimes it triggered that jittering madness, other times not.
She smiled regardless. Ken remembered the diamond tears she had wept. Wondered what had happened when the RPGs flew. What she had lost.
Christopher was lower than Theresa. He wasn’t using his feet to kick at pursuers. Feet were more powerful, and safer to use than anything else.
But Christopher had abandoned safety some time ago. He must have dropped the medieval style axe at some point, and now he was simply punching the zombies. Wild swings as he shrieked wordless screams of pain that nearly turned to pleasure each time his knuckles connected with a face, a body. He was crying in his rapturous rage. Ken wondered if he was attacking the things that had changed his baby, or if he saw himself in the things, and was murdering the father that had left a baby behind.
Never mind that it wasn’t true in the slightest. It was the lie that good parents saw when they lost a child. The what if that haunted them. That would haunt Ken.
It happened. Christopher’s recklessness caught him. One of the undead grabbed his arm. Pulled it toward him.
Christopher almost fell off the side of the thresher. He would have been killed outright if that had happened.
But he managed to hold on.
Pulling away from the mouth.
Always the mouth.
Always the terror of Change. Fear of loss that even a man torn to nothing by grief could understand.
42
Ken looked automatically to Aaron. The cowboy was busy. Pummeling his own attacker, his arm still threaded through the handrail, still trying to stay on the still-crawling thresher while stopping the undead –
(are there more of them there are where are they coming from how long will they come how long can we hold off how long can we hold out?)
– from climbing on and taking them all down. Theresa was still doing her homicidal Tarzan move.
No one could help.
Ken ran up the stairs. Using both hands for speed, even though gripping with his three-fingered left was agony.
He jumped to the thin strip of metal by the cabin.
The driver looked at him. A look that said, “We can’t stop, you can’t come in.”
Ken shook his head. He didn’t want in.
43
Christopher was screaming. Not the homicidal scream of a man born to the edge of madness. It was fear. Not fear of pain or death, but fear of something worse. This was damnation, pure and simple: condemnation to a mindless life of wandering and serving. No choice, no self. Just existence, and heeding the call to rise and destroy.
Ken tried to blank out the cries, or at least to blank out the terror that they carried. The fear that tried to force itself into his own mind.
One of his martial arts instructors, a barrel-chested Persian with scarred knuckles and a smile broader than a crescent moon
, had always quoted Miyamoto Musashi, author of The Book of Five Rings, a seminal book on sword fighting written in the 1600s.
“Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined through calm,” Master Arman would say. The words would come as a whisper, usually during the last pushup after a grueling sparring session. Musashi’s wisdom moving through the centuries to remind Ken to focus not on the struggle to survive what – at the time – had seemed like the hardest thing he would do, but rather to focus on the calm that underlay the struggle.
The Colony: Velocity (The Colony, Vol. 4) Page 9