by J. Thorn
It was like they were tied to one another. As though an invisible rope that permitted only a few feet of slack tied every zombie in the room to every other zombie. They almost orbited each other. Moving over and around the debris-strewn warzone that the studio had become, but never straying far from the other monsters.
As Ken watched, one of the bodies that he had thought was dead stood up on legs that were clearly broken and began shuffling around as well, growling and snarling. Blood spurted out of its legs with every step.
It fell eventually. But didn’t stop growling as it crawled on the floor, pulling itself along on hands that soon bled. Trying to stay with its brothers and sisters.
“That ain’t Boise,” said Aaron.
“No,” said Ken. The word came out as a whisper, sounding almost like a prayer.
Dorcas reached out and changed the channel back to Tom & Jerry. The mouse had enlisted the aid of a bulldog to destroy the larger cat.
Ken looked at the TV. It was on the vault floor, the electrical and cable inputs trailing out of the barely-cracked door. Aaron or Dorcas must have grabbed it and brought it in here.
“What about computers?” he said. “The internet?”
“Checked it already,” said Aaron. “A lot of the ‘net’s still active, and the power’s still on – in this building, at least, and who knows how long that’s even going to last – but there’s nothing about whatever all this is.” He heaved a sigh, and now he did look old. Tired. He drew a hand over his face. “Whatever happened, it happened so fast no one was ready.”
“What was it?” said Dorcas. “What did this?”
Before anyone could answer, a new sound forced its way into their world. One Ken had heard before. One they all had. And one that was both comforting and terrifying at the same time.
44
The tone reminded Ken of old modem connections: a grating computer modulation, followed by a high-pitched tone designed to demand attention.
“EAS,” said Aaron.
“What?” asked Dorcas.
“Emergency Alert System,” said Ken.
“I thought they got rid of that,” said Dorcas.
“They got rid of the Emergency Broadcast System. In favor of the EAS, which is more localized,” said Aaron. He flipped channels. The tones were on every one.
“I thought you said they were local,” said Dorcas.
“They are,” said Aaron. “Only one person has access to nationwide EAS.”
At that moment, the tones cut off, replaced by a voice from the television, playing over the cooking show that Aaron had stopped at. The voice was male, but somewhat androgynous. Computerized, Ken guessed.
“The President of the United States is dead,” said the voice. “So is the entire Cabinet, and their Secret Service details. Washington, D.C., has fallen.”
Ken looked at Dorcas. She looked more afraid than she had at any time before, even when they were stranded atop a roof and surrounded by thousands of zombies.
“I’m the only one left to do this, so… Jesus. I don’t even know why I’m doing it. So you can know. So you can take whatever measures you deem necessary.” Even computerized, the voice sounded drawn and weary.
“Get off the air, you stupid ass,” muttered Aaron. “You’re just scaring people.”
“Who do you think it is?” asked Dorcas.
Aaron shook his head, whether because he didn’t know or didn’t want to say, Ken couldn’t tell.
The strangely asexual voice continued. “We barely had enough time to read the first reports before it hit us, too. It’s worldwide. Moscow sent us half a flash over the emergency channels, then nothing. A minute later we got garbled reports of zombies from Germany, maybe thirty seconds later we heard a few sentences from London before they went dark, too. A minute and a half later it hit us.”
The voice went dead for a long time. Long enough that Ken thought maybe it was done speaking.
“I can’t tell you what to do. I can see swarms of them in the streets – the whole city, what people are left alive. There are dozens of the things outside the door here, and I only have a few seconds. Don’t wait for help from the government. If you’re alive, you’re alone. You’re on your own.” Another pause, then the voice said, “Near as we can tell, over fifty percent of the world’s population was susceptible to the initial effect. That fifty percent attacked the rest of us, and now we –”
The tones returned. The beeps and the modem sounds that reminded Ken of someone taking a Brillo pad to a disk drive.
“He’s gone,” whispered Dorcas. She sounded like she was holding back tears.
“He was gone before he started that broadcast, the dumb kid,” said Aaron. The short man reached up and put an arm around Dorcas’ shoulders. She wilted into him.
Ken looked at Aaron. The other man stared as though to say, “What now?”
Ken twisted his back, feeling his joints. Everything hurt. But everything seemed to be working, if only just barely.
The television flickered, then went out. Ken heard snaps and relays as the power grid failed. He didn’t know if it was just here, in this block, or if this time it was city wide or state wide or everywhere.
And it didn’t matter.
He could still feel Aaron staring at him in the darkness.
“I’ve got to get going,” he said. “My family’s out there.”
45
If he had been a movie hero, Ken would have accompanied that statement with a dramatic turn toward the vault door. He would have swaggered over to the thin line of light that was the only demarcation between their dark bunker and the greater darkness outside, and left to save his loved ones without a second thought.
But he wasn’t that guy. He was a history teacher. Granted, he thought of himself as fairly resourceful, okay in a fight. But he was still just a normal guy. Still scared witless at the idea of going out there alone.
So he waited a moment.
The moment stretched out. He could hear Dorcas sniffing, sounding like she was trying to suffocate her sobs before they could be born.
Aaron made no sound at all. The epitome of the strong silent type.
Ken realized he was waiting too long. He turned.
Aaron spoke. “They’re probably dead.”
Ken didn’t turn to face the other man. If he turned away from the vault door, he thought it likely he wouldn’t have the strength to leave. He would just cower in the darkness until the hordes found him, or until hunger and thirst claimed him. Either way, he was dead. And he preferred to die looking for his family.
“I know,” he said. “But I have to look.”
Aaron exhaled, a long, steady breath of air that sounded like a man getting ready to do something deeply unpleasant. “All right, then, let’s go.”
Ken felt his legs trembling. “Dorcas?” he asked.
Dorcas, still sniffling, said, “Don’t be stupid. You think I rescued you and dragged you all over creation – twice – just so you could go off and die without me being there to save you again?”
Ken felt something move past him in the dark. A moment later, a deep grunt signaled that it was Aaron. The crack of light at the vault’s entrance widened slightly, and Ken could make out the squat man pushing the thick steel door open.
As soon as it was wide enough, Aaron slipped through the gap. “Come on,” he said. “I don’t plan to be out at night.”
Ken nodded. He reached behind him in the darkness. Dorcas’ hand clasped his.
They stepped out of the safety of the vault. Into brightness. Into danger.
Into hopeless hope.
46
Ken hadn’t seen the bank coming in, of course. So he wasn’t prepared for what waited outside the vault.
Like a lot of banks in Boise, this one was fairly small. Just a vault that led into a small anteroom, then directly into the bank proper.
It was filled with the dead. People who must have been here right before or during lunch breaks. Ken
realized that Becca had noticed the first bugs at around 11:30. And now it was… he glanced at a wall clock. Analog, and it must be running on batteries, because the second hand was still sweeping along like everything was normal. 2:25 in the afternoon.
It had only been three hours. Three hours, and according to the faceless person on the television, almost everyone on the planet was either dead or converted to one of the things, one of the zombies.
None of the zombies were in here, only the aftermath. Limp forms laying across desks, tables, the floor. A pair of men lay atop one another nearby, frozen in a final tableau that made it all too easy to determine how each had died. A few feet from them, a woman slumped across one of the teller stations, her arm reaching under the bulletproof acrylic as though to take a deposit from a customer. Only the woman didn’t have a hand at the end of her arm. She must have bled out and died like that.
Bodies and blood everywhere. Made even more gruesome in the half-light that illuminated everything: the sunlight filtering in through polarized windows at the front of the bank.
The street outside appeared deserted.
Ken realized he hadn’t tried to call Maggie. He hadn’t had a single moment to do so, not more than ten seconds where he wasn’t concentrating on the pressing question of his own survival. Now he took his cell phone out of his pocket. It turned on as though everything were normal, and he saw three bars at the corner of the display: enough to indicate plenty of coverage.
He dialed Maggie’s cell number. Held the phone to his ear.
Ken saw Aaron turn and spot him. The other man’s eyes widened. “Don’t –” began the man.
Ken ignored him. Turned away.
The phone rang once.
Ken felt Aaron pulling on his shoulder.
The phone rang again.
The line picked up.
47
Ken was grinning, even though Aaron was pulling on him. Expecting to hear Maggie’s voice. Maybe one of the kids.
What came out of his phone, though, was the background noise of a nightmare.
His first thought was that it was the EAS; that the President was still alive, and was somehow broadcasting aid instructions to cell phones in the area. Certainly the noise that came out of the phone possessed the same grainy, rasping quality that the computer tone at the beginning of the televised alert had.
A moment later, though, the sound seemed to be drilling holes in Ken’s brain. It was like he had found a way to access every horrific memory of his life, and have every one of them come tumbling forward into the forefront of his mind.
The time Derek swallowed a marble and almost choked to death.
Hope’s pneumonia.
The months after Ken graduated college and found that the job market had dried up and he was about to bring a child into a world without any idea of how to take care of it.
His parents’ deaths.
The pain when he had surgery as a child, the doctor digging in his shoulder with a scalpel without using anesthesia because doing so would have made it harder to find the source of the infection.
On and on and on.
And under it all, a current of something worse than the pain and terror and rage and fear.
It was something Ken didn’t have a word for. Something beyond hopelessness. A sense that all was not merely lost but worthless. That any value he might once have felt in his life, his loved ones, was overblown and ridiculous. Muted by the reality of a universe that would not notice at all if the world were swept clean of all human life.
He wanted to lay down and die.
A hand closed over his. He barely felt it. But when the hand tore the phone away from his ear… that he noticed. It was the most exquisite pain, the most divine of agonies. The horrific memories that had bubbled to the surface of his mind became stronger for an instant – an instant that seemed an eternity – and then sank back to the depths of his consciousness.
“No phones,” said Aaron. He pointed at something.
Ken felt fuzzy, like he was waking up after a night of heavy drinking. But he managed to look in the direction Aaron was pointing at. It was a man in a nice suit, laying in the corner of the bank. He had a phone to his ear, and his eyes stared sideways at nothing.
He wasn’t breathing. Ken suspected he had listened to the sounds in the phone until he had simply shut down, until his mind somehow managed to tell his heart to stop beating. Until oblivion became not merely a respite, but the only way to escape the mental rapine of the tone.
“How’d you know?” said Ken.
“I tried to call my brother,” said Aaron. “Dorcas saved me.”
The look in Aaron’s eyes told Ken that the admiration Dorcas had for the cowboy was mutual. That made him feel good for some reason. Like even though the world was ending, there was still a chance as long as people were making connections.
He glanced at Dorcas. She was actually blushing. And that made Ken feel better still.
Then the pounding started. And that made him feel much, much worse.
48
Ken looked around and saw every single one of the zombies pounding on a car parked at the curb outside the bank.
Just one. But by now Ken’s brain automatically figured that it was like seeing a single ant at a picnic. “Just one” really meant “more to come.”
He dropped to his knees, moving behind one of the freestanding counters that the bank provided for people to fill out deposit and withdrawal slips. Dorcas and Aaron were already hunched behind another one.
“Is it locked?” Ken whispered, signaling at the door.
Aaron shook his head.
Ken sighed, but figured it didn’t matter much. The things would get in if there were more than a few of them.
A scream. Raw and thin, as though the person screaming had exactly enough energy left for that single sound. Ken couldn’t tell if the noise came from a man, woman, or child. And he didn’t want to know.
But he poked his head over the top of the counter. Because Dorcas had saved him. Aaron had saved both of them. So if he could help someone else, he would have to do it.
The scream was coming from the car outside the bank. The one the zombie was pounding on. Only now the zombie had been joined by three others. They were all large men, brawny in a way that Ken associated with bouncers or bikers: thick through the chest and gut, wearing cut-off sleeves that showed tan and muscled arms.
Another scream from inside the car. And Ken didn’t know what to do.
He heard a whirring, clicking sound beside him. Looked over. It was Aaron. He was holding a pistol, what looked like a .357 Magnum, black and bug-like and deadly. The clicking came as he spun the cylinder, which was hanging to the side. Then he looked at Ken and shook his head, holding up two fingers.
Ken didn’t ask where the other bullets had gone. Probably expended before Aaron had found him and Dorcas. Regardless, two was not enough to help whoever was in the car.
He wondered if he should try to help anyway. If there was any way to take on the four zombies that seemed intent on beating their way into the vehicle.
Then the question became moot with a sound of thunder.
A horde had arrived.
49
He had no way of knowing how many there were. Hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands – however many it was, one moment there were only the four brawny zombies pummeling at the car outside the bank, and the next moment the car was gone, drowned in a sea of once-humanity. The growling, snarling mass of monsters were all focused on the car, and even over the noise of their shouts Ken could hear the louder sounds of the car being hammered by hundreds of fists.
Ken dropped back behind the deposit slip station. He looked over at Dorcas and Aaron. Only ten feet away, but they seemed to be in another world.
Dorcas was staring at him. Her eyes alight with terror. Aaron cocked the hammer on his gun, readying one of his remaining two rounds.
Glass crashed. Ken winced, expecting to hear th
e growling invade the bank. But it was the sound of the car’s windows smashing in.
Another scream – all-too human. And all-too short.
Then, silence.
Even the growling that was the zombies’ apparent trademark ceased.
Ken peeked over the top of the counter, suspecting what he would see.
Faces. Bloody and broken. Whole and unblemished. A strange mix of the perfect and the profane.
Every one of them tilted upward, every one of their mouths open wide.
Every single person breathing in unison.
He dropped back down. Looked at Aaron and Dorcas. “We should go. Now.”
Dorcas didn’t move. Aaron shook his head.
“Trust me,” he said to Aaron. “I’ve seen this before.”
“So’ve I,” said Aaron.
“When you were out it happened again,” whispered Dorcas.
“Twice,” added Aaron.
“So you know, now’s the time to go,” said Ken. “What happens if they wake up and we’re still here?”
“The times they spend doing… that…,” said Dorcas, motioning vaguely at the mass of zombies only a dozen feet away. “It’s….” She searched for words.
“It’s getting shorter,” said Aaron. “Each time, it gets shorter, like there’s some internal countdown happening.”
A shudder ran through Ken’s frame. His head thudded in time with his speeding heartbeat. “What happens when the countdown reaches zero?” he asked.
No one answered.
Outside, the horde could still be heard breathing: in-out-in-out-in-out….
Then snap.
The growling began again.
And Ken knew if he’d gone out there, he would have just been stepping into their midst when they came back to reality – or whatever passed for reality in their minds.