Reckoning.2015.010.21

by Michaelbrent Collings

Thinking was a luxury. There was only what had to be done.

  He landed with a subtle crunch on the asphalt, hands going down to steady him from the high jump. Aaron was still squinting, looking at him like he wasn't sure what to do with a sudden intruder. "You think it's a good idea to get out?"

  Another crunch as Theresa landed. Softer than he had – she had actually bothered to crawl most of the way down the side of the truck bed before dropping to the pavement. She straightened. "Why aren't we just going around?"

  Aaron nodded at the car in the ditch. "Can't go there. Too steep, and we'll get hung up on the rails." He pointed at the other side, where there was another depression. "I wanna see what's over there."

  "Okay." Theresa stepped toward that side of the road.

  "It don't take three people to look at a roadside."

  "No," she answered. Still walking. "But it might take three to beat off anything we find there."

  And then, as if whatever celestial entity who was in charge of the world they now lived in – didn't seem likely to Christopher that it was God, if He'd ever existed – they heard something.

  Aaron and Christopher were already standing still. Now they went rigid.

  The sound came again. Smaller than usual, but still familiar. Still recognizable, and still enough to curdle Christopher's guts.

  The growl.

  105

  They all turned – slowly – in the direction of the sound. For a long time no one moved. Christopher sensed motion beside them, and almost screamed before he realized it was Amulek climbing out of the truck. He landed in an absolute silence that somehow made the low growling seem louder, stronger, more terrifying.

  Ken did not appear over the top of the dump truck. Christopher didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad one.

  Amulek raised his hand. Pointed.

  The cars were three deep in the area he pointed. And in the middle one, there was movement. Slow. Jerky.

  A zombie.

  At first Christopher wondered why it was still there. There hadn't been any other people – alive, dead, or Changed – in any of the other cars.

  Then he saw the other two cars had slammed into the middle car sideways. Like all three had skidded to a ninety-degree-angle on the highway, then locked together in a death embrace.

  The creature was trapped in the car.

  It opened its mouth. The growl came out. But Christopher realized he was hearing the growl for the first time. Not the sound of fingers scraping across the inside of his skull, not that invitation to –

  (give up, give in)

  – lay down and die.

  It was just… sound. The noise of a dog dying slowly. Not in pain, just fading.

  It didn't seem to notice them.

  Just like the dude in the bathroom.

  The thing's hands were on the steering wheel. Christopher wondered if they had been like that since the Change. If it had frozen in undeath, had stayed like that because there was no reason to move.

  But there was reason now. They were the zombies' prey, and Christopher didn't think the creatures cared much about whether the odds were in their favor in a fight. They just attacked, and attacked, and attacked until their prey was dead or Changed.

  This one simply sat. Eyes wide, staring at the car's ceiling. Mouth open, a gaping maw that Christopher could see right into. Three of its teeth were shattered, nubs that he focused on for some reason and that seemed incredibly important in the timeless forever between spotting the zombie and drawing his first, panicked breath.

  Don't scream. Don't scream. Don't scream.

  Why isn't it attacking?

  Why didn't the other one attack?

  The creature's mouth was agape, air rasping in and out of its body in long, measured gasps that Christopher could hear through the cracks in the side window.

  Another thing that made no sense: the things went on forever, no matter how badly they were hurt. So why did they respire? What could that possibly do for them, unless it was simply some strange motor memory – a last gasp, literally, of the life the Changed had once enjoyed?

  Not important right now. Stay on track.

  His first impulse was to throw himself back to the ground, roll, and come up running. But….

  But there was no confrontation. The thing just kept sitting there. Staring at nothing. Dead to the world.

  Aaron thought for a moment. Then turned back to the side of the road. Back to what he had been walking toward before the sound came. "Come on," he said.

  "You know what's going on?" asked Christopher.

  Aaron looked grim. "I have an idea."

  106

  They looked at the side of the road. It was steep there, but Aaron said he thought the truck would make it down fine. Christopher didn't question the assessment.

  They went back to the truck. Maggie leaned out of the cab and asked, "Are we going to get through? Can we still get to Micron?" and looked at her children. Lizzy was asleep – or whatever it was that wrapped silence around her and shut her eyes – on her lap. Hope had been laid across the bench seat, her head in her mother's lap.

  Aaron didn't answer the question. Instead, he said, "Here's what I think: this is an outer defense." Everyone looked at him. "I been in some pretty nasty places. No hiding that, and I guess any Top Secret classifications are probably moot at this point." He glanced at the pile of cars. "Let's say you have a base," he said. "You're trying to build a military installation in a place where you're worried about possible attacks."

  "Like the ones in Afghanistan?" said Theresa.

  "That's a pretty good analogy," said Aaron. "Say you've cleaned out an area, a green zone, but you're still worried about attacks – suicide bombers, or straight-up military strikes. So what do you do?"

  "You build a wall," said Theresa.

  Aaron nodded.

  "But this isn't a defensive wall," said Christopher. "This is just some cars that crashed along with the rest of the world."

  "I know. But the way it works is this: you build serious defenses close to your base. Walls, mines, guards with firepower. Farther out, though," he spread his hands apart, "you can't do all that. But still, you don't want your first notice of an attack to be the attack itself. So what do you do?"

  "Spotters," said Theresa.

  "Right. People scoping out the area surrounding your base. And farther than that? Maybe you bribe locals. Maybe you just put up security cameras." Aaron looked at Christopher. "And then there's the other thing."

  Christopher tilted his head. "What?"

  "Any of you notice how these things move?" asked Aaron.

  "Fast," said Theresa. "Vicious."

  Maggie spoke, a quiet voice from the cab. She usually spoke quietly, Christopher noted. But whenever she spoke, the others listened. Her soft voice commanded more respect than most men's shouts and screams. "They don't do well alone," she said.

  Aaron nodded. "So you noticed too." He looked around the group. Then focused on Christopher. "You remember the things, the way they were when they climbed up the Wells Fargo Center? Coming for all of us?"

  "I think we already established 'fast' and 'vicious.' I would also add, 'really really scary.'"

  "Right," said Aaron with a tight grin. "But how did they move together?"

  Theresa blinked, understanding suddenly shining in her eyes. "They move like one person. Like a single big body." She focused on Aaron. "They don't bump into each other. They don't fall over each other. None of them ever gets in the way of the other."

  Christopher thought of the hordes he had seen. Some only a few hundred, others over a hundred thousand. And thinking back, the only time he could remember the things bumping or jostling unnecessarily at one another was when one of them was injured in the head.

  "Now that's weird," he said.

  "Yeah. They attack as a perfect unit. The most perfectly coordinated soldiers who ever existed," said Aaron.

  "But that's not true," said Theresa. "What about those
two in Crow City? The ones just lying in the middle of the road? They didn't look very coordinated with the others."

  "No, they didn't. Until the others bungled along and joined them. And then –"

  "Then they all ran perfectly." Theresa shook her head. "What does it mean? What does it have to do with this?" She gestured at the cars.

  "The one we found didn't move fast," said Christopher. He quickly recounted what they had seen in the mine office.

  "Makes sense," said Aaron.

  "You have a different version of 'sense' than I do, cowboy," said Christopher.

  "No, it does. I think…." Aaron's lips pursed as though he were trying to figure out the best way to say what he was thinking. "I think this is some kind of distributed intelligence."

  "What's that?" asked Theresa.

  "You know what an octopus does when you cut off its arm?" said Aaron.

  Christopher shrugged, "Throws out one of its roller skates?"

  Theresa glared at him, but Aaron took the answer in stride. "It pretty much keeps on doing what it was doing. You know what happens to the arm?"

  "What?" said Theresa.

  "It pretty much keeps on doing what it was doing. It'll grab stuff, even pull bits of food toward the octopus's mouth – even though the mouth isn't there anymore."

  "That's creepy," said Christopher.

  "How can it do that?" asked Theresa, and Amulek nodded as though adding his seal of approval to the question.

  "It does that because its brain isn't in its head. Or at least, not just in its head. It has millions of neurons, and they're gathered in a series of nodes – sort of mini-brains throughout the thing's body and arms. There's a big node in the head that controls vision and respiration and whatnot, but it ain't the only part of its intelligence."

  "So when you cut off the arm, the brains in that arm are still functioning," said Christopher.

  "Then why do they try to bring food to a mouth that's not there?" asked Maggie. "Don't the… the arm brains sense the rest of the body is gone?"

  "Ah," said Aaron with a satisfied look. "That's the question. And the answer is that the brains all work together to form a very intelligent whole. But when you cut off a part of the octopus's body, you're literally making both the body and the remaining limb a bit stupider. Cut into small enough pieces, the bits won't function anymore – they just aren't smart enough to get along on their own."

  "And that means…?" said Theresa.

  "I've been operating under the assumption that this was an attacking army," said Aaron. "I think I might have been wrong about that. This ain't no attacking army. It's just a few beings, whose intelligence is distributed among the millions – billions – of people who have been Changed."

  He looked at Hope. Lizzy. "I think we've got two of the primary nodes right here."

  107

  "We already knew they were important," said Theresa. Christopher heard unvoiced: So should we kill them now? Maybe it was his imagination and Theresa meant no such thing, but he sensed Maggie tense at the statement. "What does that mean about Silent Bob over there?" she said.

  "It means that when they're separated from each other, the nodes don't function properly. Put them in a group, they're smart. By themselves… it's like they're toenail clippings. No good at all."

  "Toenail clippings don't come try to murder you when another toenail clipping comes along," said Theresa.

  "That's true," said Aaron. "The ones we saw last night seem to show that if individuals bumble into one another, they can be reactivated. Can rejoin the group. But the fact is the more isolated they are the less useful they are. That's why the ones in Crow City could muster up the gumption to follow us – there were enough of them to create the intelligence necessary to connect to whatever beam it is that tells them to kill everyone they come across. But as a solitary creature…." He shook his head. "They're nothing to worry about."

  "Except for the fact that the ones we've seen are almost always in groups," said Theresa, "so –"

  "So they're going to be very smart, and possibly getting smarter as the queens or the king or whoever's running things finishes growing and establishes final control over them. Then there won't be any hope for us at all. Faster than us, stronger than us. Smarter than us. The human race will end."

  "So the one in the car got stuck in a place where he would be all alone, and that put him to sleep," said Christopher. "Until some of its buddies come along."

  "Yeah, but I wonder if he's acting like a broadcast station. Separated from the rest, too stupid to do anything but lay there. But he's maybe picking things up, maybe sending information like a dumb security camera. First line of defense. Passive information being conveyed."

  "So we should get moving," said Theresa. "Why are we sitting here if you think it's broadcasting?"

  "Because I don't know for sure. I'm just conjecturing about that last, and I didn't see any point in rushing in. Besides, what if us trying to get through the cars – actually past them, as opposed to just taking a look at them – is what will trigger the thing?"

  "Damned if you do, damned if you don't," said Maggie.

  "Yup," said Aaron. "I figured we probably have a little time, and that's good. Because we need to make a decision."

  "What's that?"

  "Let's assume that they get dumber the farther from others they are," said Aaron.

  "Seems to make sense," said Theresa.

  "I'm sold," said Christopher. He flashed a smile. She scratched her nose and pointed. He felt his own nose and realized he had a huge clot of blood sticking to his right nostril.

  Nice. Very sexy.

  He kept grinning at her as he pulled it off. It made his eyes water. He held it out to her. "I picked it just for you."

  "Oh, my God, are you always –"

  Maggie's voice cut Theresa short. "What you say makes sense," she said to Aaron. "They stick together. But I've never seen one of them left behind, either."

  "Right," said Aaron. "Which is why we gotta make a decision. They don't leave their friends alone – they always travel together. But this one's out here alone. Separated? No, he was left there. So I definitely think that he's some kind of broadcaster. Just like when the one you two," he said, indicating Christopher and Theresa, "bumped into started making noise, the others came that much faster. So," he said, and looked at each person in turn, holding their gazes with his own before moving on. "How bad do we want to get to this anechoic chamber? Because this is the only way through for a long way around, and my guess is that when we try to go through the wall, all hell is going to break loose."

  108

  They got in the truck. Amulek looked at Christopher and Theresa, and gestured at the cab.

  "I'm good in back," said Christopher.

  "Me, too."

  Amulek shrugged and tilted his head: Suit yourself. Then he climbed back into the truck. He took Hope and held her in his arms, head lolling over his shoulder like an oversized baby.

  Aaron climbed back in as well, while Christopher and Theresa clambered into the back of the truck.

  The truck shifted into gear. Began reversing.

  Christopher looked at Ken. He was still hunched in the back of the truck bed. "You hear what Aaron said?" he asked.

  Ken nodded. "He was right."

  "About the way these things think?"

  Ken nodded.

  "What about after we get past these cars?" asked Theresa. "Is everything going to fall to pieces around us?"

  The truck shifted gears again and began moving forward. Aaron cranked it to the left, toward the depression on that side of the road.

  Ken finally drew his gaze away from the empty air. He stared at Theresa. "Is everything going to fall to pieces?" He smiled a thin, rictus-like smile. "It already has."

  The truck tilted suddenly. Christopher and Theresa both reached out to hold the side of the truck bed so as to keep from falling. Ken just shifted his balance and remained perfectly in place.

&nb
sp; The truck evened out. Went forward for a few seconds, then tilted back up.

  Christopher's body ached. Not just with the pains and injuries of the past days. His muscles were so rigid they trembled. He didn't know what would happen after they passed the cars, but he knew he was terrified.

  He looked at Theresa. At Ken. Neither of them looked back at him. Theresa looked as scared as he felt. Ken just looked… like he had since he came back.

  They bounced over the lip of the asphalt. Back onto the road.

  Nothing happened.

  Christopher almost relaxed. Then he stood up. Looked over the back lip of the truck.

  The zombie was still in the car. But it had moved. Turned its head.

  It was looking at them.

  109

  Driving.

  Silence, other than the hum of big tires, the pound of a motor designed for hard work and conscripted for flight.

  The sun crept higher on the horizon, now completely visible though the tang of smoke still touched Christopher's mouth and nose.

  He wondered how much longer they could go before running out of gas.

  The truck swerved more and more as they continued on, occasionally slowing to a crawl as it nudged cars out of the way. But there were no more instances of cars spanning the road, of roadblocks all but impassable.

  "What were you?" Theresa said suddenly. "Before."

  The words took Christopher by surprise. For a while – he didn't know how long – he had been hypnotized. Nearly lulled to sleep by the thrum of the engine, the crackle-hum of the tires.

  Been up for too long. Running for too long.

  Theresa was looking at him with something approaching concern. Probably worried he was going to break into some freaked out coo-coo dance right there in the truck bed.

  He shrugged. "I was a screw-up, mostly. Kicked out of enough schools it started to cost my dad serious money to find new ones that would accept me. Which I guess was worth it for him since it kept bad-ol' me out of his hair. You were a cop, right?"