Reckoning.2015.010.21

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Then the first one of them leaped onto the conveyor belt as well. A moment later, the others followed. Picking their way over the rocks and up the length of the belt almost casually as they followed Buck.

  "Run, you idiots! Get out of here!" Buck screamed the words without looking back. The conveyor motors almost drowned him out. But Christopher heard. And, hearing, knew that his friend didn't intend to escape.

  Not Buck. Not you!

  Buck jumped onto the final conveyor, the one tilted at a forty-five-degree angle that led up to the machinery that crushed the rocks and separated them into their various sizes. He had to leap over a pile of rubble that had gathered at the base of the conveyor to do so. He misgauged the jump. Fell to his knees.

  Christopher screamed. He knew he should help, should do something. It was his friend, it was Buck, it was the right thing to do.

  But he couldn't move. And then he couldn't even scream, because Aaron clapped a hand over his mouth.

  "Do you want them to hear you?" Aaron said in a voice that was half whisper, half snarl.

  Christopher tore the cowboy's hand from his mouth. "Don't we – we can't just leave him there. What do we do?" He looked at Aaron at the last. The cowboy stared back at him with downcast eyes. Then the older man put Hope in Maggie's arms and climbed into the cab of the dump truck.

  Christopher looked back at Buck. His friend was standing on the thin ridge of metal that was the outer frame of the rock crusher. Looking less sure than before. Made sense – Christopher didn't imagine Buck had had much cause to put himself in that position before.

  Buck's arms whipped around in great circles as he almost lost his balance. Nearly tumbled into the crusher. Theresa made a noise that was both gasp and yelp.

  Buck leaped at the last second. Jumped over the chute and onto a thin metal ledge just beyond. Christopher figured he would jump down. Run.

  He didn't.

  He turned, and Christopher saw his friend had grabbed a rock the size of two fists somewhere along his run. He raised it toward the zombies who were now making their way up the slanted conveyor.

  "Come on, you assholes!" Buck shouted.

  The first zombie leaped.

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  Buck swung the rock perfectly.

  It hit the zombie's skull when the creature hit the high point of his leap. The moment when up and down hang in perfect balance and the body can most easily be moved. Christopher saw a spray of black blood, then the thing crumpled in midair. Its movement changed from forward and up to straight down.

  The machine that chugged below Buck's feet stuttered. A high-pitched tone sounded for a moment, followed by a wet blat as what was left of the zombie – a few shreds of flesh and slivers of bone – poured out of the chute below the rock crusher.

  The second zombie came. It jumped as well, heedless of the fate of its brother. This time, Buck's swing wasn't as flawless. The thing actually got a hand on his arm before Buck bashed it. Not on the head this time, but on the shoulder. The left side of the zombie's body dropped several inches, but it held on. Leaned its face toward Buck.

  Buck slammed the rock sideways. The zombie's head split apart at the temple. It fell, too.

  The next fell. The next.

  On the sixth zombie, Christopher actually started to hope.

  Come on, Buck. You can do it. Get back to us, pal, just –

  The seventh and eighth zombies leaped. They flew through the air at the same time, jumping over the chute and reaching for Buck with four arms that were so close together they seemed to belong to the same creature.

  Buck pummeled one of them into the chute. The other got across. Wrapped its arms around Buck. Leaned in for the bite. Buck managed to get his right arm – hand still holding the rock – across the thing's neck. Holding it back. But the zombie pressed in, closer and closer.

  Another zombie jumped across.

  Another.

  Three at once. Too many, dear God, too many!

  The third one reared back to bite. Nothing to stop it.

  Buck looked toward the other survivors. Nearly buried beneath the mass of flesh that clung to him, but Christopher saw him. Saw his face.

  Buck smiled. A lopsided smile that managed to be both a goodbye and a final good-spirited jab: See you, Christopher. And I'm the big hero, so suck it.

  Then Buck tipped himself forward. His arms flew wide, and he dragged all three of the zombies down into the crusher.

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  Maggie: "Hurry!"

  Theresa: "You got it?"

  Aaron: "Shut up!"

  Amulek: silent.

  Hope and Lizzy: unconscious in the others' arms.

  Christopher: watching. Just watching. He barely heard the others, barely registered the dozen or so zombies that had turned toward the remainder of the group and were now jumping off the conveyor belts.

  Buck.

  He heard a thin mewling. A sound that morphed into a word: "Nooooooooo…." The sound was coming from him. Not just from his mouth, but from his soul.

  Buck.

  Dammit, Buck!

  He saw the man's look as he fell. Saw the three zombies dragged down, a fourth as well as Buck hooked its leg at the last moment and yanked it forward, toppled it into the chute.

  Christopher couldn't look away from the top of the rock crusher. Staring at the spot where his friend had stood. Where his friend had fallen.

  He glanced below the machine. Nothing there to show Buck had ever existed. Just a wet mass with a few bits that still twitched even after being pounded to a near-slurry.

  There was no way to distinguish between what had been his friend and what had been the things that killed him.

  The remaining zombies halved the distance between the crusher and the survivors. The conveyors shuddered along beside them, heedless of what had just happened. Machines unfeeling, unknowing.

  Christopher envied them. Envied their lack of understanding, their lack of humanity.

  "Anything, Aaron?" screamed Theresa.

  Christopher finally turned as he heard the clank of a boot on metal. Aaron climbed out of the truck. His face grim.

  He pulled out his knife and moved into the front of the group. "Not gonna happen," he said. Christopher couldn't tell if he was referring to his failure to hotwire the truck, or was voicing a conviction: The zombies won't get past me.

  The first was despair. The second a lie.

  "Run," said Aaron. "Get away."

  No one moved. They all knew what Christopher did: there was no escaping this time. Nowhere to run, and no time to do it.

  This was death.

  Christopher saw his friend's face again. Saw that defiant last look in Buck's eyes.

  Christopher moved to stand beside Aaron.

  "Run," repeated the cowboy.

  "And let Buck go out braver than I do?" said Christopher. He crouched. Ready to attack. To die. "No way."

  The first zombie leaped at him.

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  He enjoyed a last moment of clarity.

  Christopher had been willing to die for his friends before. When they all ran down the tilted body of a jet, trying to escape the creatures that followed, he had used his body to barricade the way. Waiting to die – or to become a slave to whatever force Changed so many.

  The zombies had pounded their way in – and right past him. It hadn't made sense then, but now he understood that it must have had something to do with the queens growing inside the little girls. A call so strong that in that moment the zombies wanted only them, and nothing else. He wasn't in the way anymore, so he held no importance in that moment.

  Still, he had stayed behind knowing he would end. Either his life, or his thinking self – which was just as bad in his book. And he had carried a bit of pride for that.

  Now, however, he felt something more. In that instant when the creature leaped at him and he knew that this time there would be no reprieve, he felt something greater than mere pride. He wondered if this was what the men
of the Alamo had felt, if this was the sensation the three hundred Spartans had enjoyed in their final battle. The feeling of sacrifice. And not just for family or friends – this was sacrifice for something that could not be touched, but only felt. A sacrifice for good, for hope.

  A sacrifice that, in Dorcas' words, was truly the Right Thing.

  The zombie's fingernail – ragged and sharp from whatever destruction it had wrought since the Change – raked against Christopher's cheek. Christopher brought up a hand to the spot he knew the creature would be trying to bite him. That was their strategy, their only course: attack, bite, Change.

  Failing that, they simply killed.

  He rammed his forearm into the zombie's neck. The creature reached forward again, and this time it was like being attacked by pitchforks as the thing's strong hands ripped at his arms, his throat, his face. Everywhere the skin was exposed, the thing raked at him, slashed with those shards of nail that still hung to its fingers.

  Christopher balled his free hand into a fist and slammed it into the side of the zombie's head. It barely noticed. He felt someone beside him. Grabbing at the zombie from the side, pulling it away.

  It was Theresa. She was nearly hanging off the thing's back, feet and legs kicking it in a panicked attempt to get it away from Christopher.

  "Get away!" Christopher screamed. "Get the girls and –" His wind was cut off as one of the zombie's hands went around his throat. It was a machine press covered in a thin layer of gory flesh. Compressing his throat, cutting off air and blood to his brain.

  The world started spinning. Darkness gathered at the edges of his sight. Theresa was still trying to pull the zombie off Christopher, and he was aware that Aaron was engaged in a fight with a different zombie. That. Then a different beast, a different zombie, yanked her away. She spun in time to plant her hands on the thing's shoulders as it fell on her. She landed on the ground, flat on her back, doing a horrible parody of a bench press as she shoved against her attacker; tried to keep its mouth away from her flesh.

  The darkness fell further over Christopher's eyes. A curtain gradually dropping over a movie screen. The zombie that held his throat drew closer.

  Here I come, Buck.

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  The thing opened its mouth wider. Christopher felt the heat of its body on him, something rank and raw pricked at his nostrils.

  He saw every tooth. Most of them were broken, ground down to shards by biting things they were never designed to bite. The front one was whole. White as the perfect teeth of the average spray-tanned TV news anchor. For some reason, that tooth seemed so important. Seemed like everything there was, the only thing left in a world gone dark.

  Then, suddenly, the thing's mouth slammed shut. Not the way it would if it were grinding down on something, chewing it to bits. Not even the way someone might close their mouth when falling to the ground, a hard hit that could cause a person to bite off their own tongue.

  The zombie's mouth clacked together impossibly hard. Something hit Christopher's cheek – several somethings.

  Teeth. Broken teeth.

  And then the zombie just… disappeared. Christopher had an impression of feet in front of his eyes. Like the thing had suddenly leaped five feet in the air.

  Or like something had yanked it upward, so hard and fast its mouth crashed shut hard enough to shatter everything hard inside it.

  Christopher staggered as the pressure came away from his throat. For a moment the darkness disappeared, but he saw even less than he had a moment before as a blinding white enveloped his sight. Then crazed fireworks went off at the periphery of his vision, and where they appeared they burned away the fog until he could see again.

  Sounds came to him. Struggles. Aaron, using his entire body as a weapon. Good hand, elbows, knees, feet. Zombies fell away from his onslaught, but only for a moment. Only to rise again.

  Christopher heard something beside him. The sky above was a mass of smoke, a rank cloud that lay a gray pall across everything.

  Something fell out of the smoke above them. So fast that Christopher barely had time to realize there was something above them before it slammed into the ground about twenty feet in front of the group.

  It splashed.

  Christopher, still stunned, still reeling from his attack, saw twitching bits swimming in a ten-foot-wide puddle of gore.

  Theresa screamed. He looked at her, moving listlessly. She was still pushing on the zombie that had fallen on her. Its mouth inches away from her face. She pushed at it, rammed her hands into its throat, its eyes. Gouged them both, and black ichor sluiced over her hands and arms.

  It didn't care. It raised its own hands and pinned hers to the side. Leaned in.

  And disappeared.

  Theresa was left staring up at nothing. Her hands clenched in space as though fighting the ghost of the thing that had almost killed her. But there was nothing there.

  Another few seconds, then the second zombie fell. This one didn't make it to the ground. It hit the blade of the bulldozer. Its head severed cleanly, rolling away as its body exploded across the hood of the machine.

  Two more drops. Two more crashes. Two more splashes.

  Christopher saw one of them as it flew up, moving so fast he barely glimpsed it before it disappeared in the smoke overhead. A turbine-twist in the dark cloud – something had just gone in. Something bigger than just the zombie.

  He caught sight of a shadow in the smoke. It shifted, pulsed. Seemed in one moment to be small as a hawk, and in the next to grow huger than any bird Christopher had heard of.

  It fell into the remaining zombies. Nothing more than a gray blur of ash and smoke.

  It slammed into the mass. Then reversed direction in an impossibly fast motion. Flying back upward again. It seemed bigger as it ascended – grown to twice its previous size.

  What now?

  A long moment. He realized the zombies had frozen. No longer moving, but standing so still it was as though they had been replaced by perfect statues fashioned to look like the creatures.

  Christopher blinked, his mind trying to cope with what it had just seen. Trying to put together all the pieces.

  He was so focused on trying to figure out what it was he was seeing that he only peripherally noticed the shadow dropping again. Rising once more, seeming twice as large.

  Two more drops. Two more crashes. Two more splashes.

  The zombies still didn't move. Just… waited.

  Grab, crash, splash. Grab, crash, splash.

  Two zombies left. One in the back, in the smoke. Crash, splash.

  Then the shadow fell on the last zombie. Christopher caught the impression of a giant creature, of wings buzzing from its back.

  The last zombie splashed across the ground in a gory circle that was so close Christopher felt chunks knock against his already-drenched shoes.

  Then the shadow fell again. And stood before them.

  Huge, iridescent wings buzzed. Then they folded. Disappeared into two huge, fleshy flaps at the creature's back. Gone, covered like the wings of a beetle.

  Only this was no beetle.

  "Hello," said Ken.

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  It rooted Christopher to the spot. Theresa, Aaron, and Buck froze as well.

  Maggie did not.

  "Ken!" she shrieked.

  The sand beneath their feet had turned to a strange, loose sludge – saturated by the fluid the zombies used as blood. So Maggie slipped twice as she ran toward her husband. One time she went down to one knee, her pants instantly darkening a few shades. But she slid her way back to her feet and kept running.

  She didn't seem to notice the differences in her husband. The lengthened arms, the uneven, slightly pointed teeth. The bony hands that seemed to fold slightly at the middle – a joint that no human had ever been born with. Armored wrists that pivoted in ball joints, a rounded chest that was both broad and streamlined.

  She didn't see any of it. Just screamed his name again as she ran to him.
>
  "Maggie!"

  Christopher hadn't been sure the thing was his friend. He saw the resemblances in the body, but the look in his eyes when he destroyed the zombies in the bunker – there was a rage and ferocity in those eyes that banished all thoughts it might be his friend.

  Now, though, he knew: this was Ken. The voice was deeper, odd in tone. But there was no way to mistake the sound of longing, the ache of love nearly lost.

  That was the way Christopher would have said Carina's name, if she had somehow returned to him.

  Maggie took the last few steps, Hope still in one arm but the other one sweeping wide to take in the husband she had lost. To hold him, perhaps to never again let him go.

  When she came within a few feet of him, Christopher saw something change in his friend's eyes. For a split second the thing that had made him Ken disappeared. The wrath, the savagery, came back into his eyes. He danced back, his movements marked by the grace of legs that bent at the knees – and also at the shins and thighs. His right hand shot out, fingers splayed and extending suddenly into bony blades that shot out of them.

  "Don't touch me!" he shouted. The last word drifted into an animal growl.

  Maggie slid again, this time because her feet shuddered and skipped across the ground as she tried to stop her forward rush. "Ken?" she said. Christopher couldn't see her face, but the sound of the word conveyed her sudden confusion, the terror that had sliced through her momentary euphoria. "Ken?" she said again.

  Ken kept moving back. No longer leaping, but still inching away from his wife until he was about ten feet away. His bladed hands remained up, points directed at her. He trembled.

  "I'm… sorry," he managed. The voice still had a growl hiding within it.

  "Ken, what's – what's going on?" Maggie asked.

  The blades shifted, now pointed at Maggie's stomach.

  Then Christopher realized that Ken wasn't pointing at Maggie after all. He was gesturing at Hope. At the little girl who was still unconscious after all they had been through.