Anarchy

by Peter Meredith

  Kathy began nodding and grunted, “Have you seen yourself? You don’t look very human if you ask me. You ever think you might be one of these demons?”

  “No. If you ever saw one, you’d know the difference. They’re twisted and evil right to the core.”

  Her expression suggested that he was pretty damned twisted. He tried to sit up and once more his back sent shards of pain out to his extremities, making him contort worse than ever. When he could look up, Kathy was ten feet away and backing slowly towards the stairwell door. “I’m going to have to trust you on that,” she said to him. She tried on a reassuring smile that completely missed its mark. “Why don’t you just wait here, and I’ll get help. It’ll be okay.”

  “Help killing me?” he muttered when she had darted down the stairs. She was going to find Mr. Jennings and his Louisville Slugger. Bryce tried crawling across the roof, but the best he could manage was a contorted inch-worm kind of thrust and drag. It was too slow, and he pictured Mr. Jennings slamming open the door with his bat across one brawny shoulder. The man he imagined would not listen to reason from someone in Bryce’s position.

  To move faster he was forced to roll. With every full rotation, he had to stifle a scream. His world spun in a haze of pain and shifting horizons until he felt the nothing just beyond the far edge of the roof. There were muffled voices coming from the stairwell now. He had seconds to act: roll off the edge and into the unknown or try to cling by his fingertips from the edge and hope Mr. Jennings wouldn’t bother to look around.

  Clinging like that was a slim, stupid hope but Bryce was too done in for anymore climbing, while jumping was simply out of the question, and so he rolled off the roof and grabbed the edge just as gravity took full control. He had not forgotten the state of his fingers; with them throbbing in time with each slow beat of his heart, it would’ve been impossible to forget them. But that was the tips, and he had a grip of the roof further toward the base of each finger. He was still strong enough to hold his weight of several hundred pounds and might have clung there indefinitely; however, that same weight when coupled with the razor-sharp flange sticking up along the edge of the roof was enough to cut through the thin tendons at the base of each of his fingers.

  He felt the soft flesh parting as the steel sliced a line across eight of his fingers and he faced a terrible split-second decision; fall or cripple his fingers…and then fall. There’d be no holding on with his tendons cut. He went with the quick route and released his grip.

  Chapter 28

  Victoria marveled at Bryce as he leapt from one side of the alley to the other, bounding from wall to wall, and thought: It’s not fair. As far as she knew, the skinny little twerp had done nothing to deserve his transformation. He had no one depending on him; no children, no wife, perhaps not even parents. And yet, he was powerful, while she was a literal beggar in comparison. She, who was in such great need, was nothing and had to beg and scrape and make outrageous demands to force him to help her.

  Life was not fair. She had known this and accepted the concept—something that was easy to do when she had always been on the privileged side of life’s teeter-totter. Now her end was falling, and she was filled with a pissy, whining anger over her lot.

  Maddy also watched Bryce, though she did it with her breath pent up in her chest. A greater darkness than that of the night surrounded him. Within it he seemed small and diffuse, as if he were leaping out of her life and maybe even out of his own. A part of her needed to see through this darkness, to know what was going to happen to him, but there was no time. The zombies were chasing after Bryce and her escape window was seconds only. There were always more zombies and they couldn’t wait around to be caught again.

  She climbed down to the alley floor and hefted Bryce’s staff. Now, it seemed a little lighter than it had, and she gave the air a tentative jab and then swished it around before letting out a grumbly, “Hmm.” It was still too heavy for her liking and had it been a pipe she had just found lying about, she probably would have left it behind. However, it was Bryce’s, and when he caught up, he would be angry if she tossed it aside. If he catches up. Despite the need to get moving she found herself staring after him.

  “Come on,” Victoria whispered, giving her shirt a yank and hobbling down the alley toward the street. With her foot cramping badly from having been wedged into an impossibly tight space for so long, running was out of the question just then. She tried skipping to move faster.

  Sighing, Maddy watched her for a few seconds before she loped after, catching the blonde quickly. “I’d stop that. You look way too human. Try limping.”

  After all Victoria had been through, limping came naturally. The two scurried to the street, where they found nothing new; endless lines of cars crushed in on each other and zombies moaning here and there. The sky to the east had a purple cast to the blackness. It wouldn’t be long before the sun crept up over the horizon, though in the city canyons, full sunrise would take a little longer to attain.

  “Which way?” Victoria asked.

  Neither direction looked promising and Maddy was sorely tempted to ask Victoria her own thoughts concerning directions. It would mean hiding behind the thin veneer of a tourist and laying their destiny on Victoria’s shoulders. They could not afford such weakness. Maddy let her eyes lose their focus as she opened her mind. She opened it to darkness—Bryce was in trouble—but she knew that already, just like she knew there was nothing she could do to help him.

  Concentrate, she told herself and squeezed her eyes hard shut. The eye squeeze did little to help and both directions open to her were muddy and vague with heavy clouds. Turning her head, she “looked” to the right. To the north, she thought. It was the direction they needed to go; however, there was a presence in that direction that repulsed Maddy.

  But south led them back the way they had come and if they went that way, Victoria would soon balk. Maddy decided to compromise by cutting across the street in a low crouch. She would take them north, but around the presence—no, the demon—there was no sense pretending it was something other than that. They slunk up the block to the first cross street they came to and went east. Their path was something of a staircase; north a block and then east a block, then north a block…

  And the demon kept pace, always moving along a similar route just a block over. Maddy tried to reverse course and drove Victoria along, hoping to flank the demon and get around it. The demon was not fooled and once more, Maddy had to cut east and then north. As the sunrise crept closer, Maddy started to get desperate. She was being “allowed” this route because it favored the demon. With each block forward, the psychic darkness on either side crowded in closer. The two women were being herded.

  “We need to stop,” Maddy hissed, drawing Victoria across a glass strewn plaza, through a shattered, twenty-foot tall window, and into the lobby of a skyscraper. By this time, the sky outside was a fine grey color, while inside with seventy floors of concrete overhead, the lobby was shadowed and gloomy.

  Victoria was secretly glad for the break. She couldn’t feel the demon like Maddy could, but she could feel Maddy’s tension. “What’s going on? You gotta pee? I gotta pee.” The urge was suddenly on her bad enough that it felt like she was about to burst. “I can’t remember the last time I peed. I’m always on the kids about peeing before…” For her, it was no longer kids in the plural. Suddenly the memory of Tessa being ripped from her grip hit her and she staggered. It had happened in a blink. She had been there one second and gone the next, leaving nothing behind but a swirl of dust.

  “She was turned to dust.” Victoria stared at the tiny cubes of glass littering the beautiful granite tiled floor, but only saw that swirl of dust. Had it even been dust? Maybe it had been Tessa’s soul. A shudder ran down her back. “I have to pee,” she whispered and staggered away.

  Now that Victoria had mentioned it, Maddy realized that she had to go as well, and she even started after the blonde, feeling a girlish bonding moment about t
o happen. Normal women frequently went to the bathroom together, or at least they used to. Maddy had never really experienced that. She had generally been an outsider, and even among her fellow nerds, she had been self-conscious about her weight. “I’ll stand guard,” she told Victoria, who didn’t look as though she had heard.

  Victoria went to the clearly marked bathroom, took one look inside and paused. As should’ve been expected, the room was windowless, and thus, utterly dark. She turned back, her face rendered oddly tilted by her personal misery. “It’s too dark.”

  Maddy bit back the retort: Then pee in a trashcan. She could feel Victoria’s loss. It made it hard to be anything but sympathetic to the woman. “I’ll hold the door open.” She stood with her back to the propped door with the pipe held in front of her like she was some kind ceremonial guard. Slowly her forehead bent until she felt the cold rounded edge of the pipe. It was strangely soothing and she could sense the darkness was closing in ever tighter, their options growing ever fewer, and yet she felt one direction draw her with magnetic force. They could go back, For Bryce…No, to be safe, she insisted.

  There was a definite window of safety open to them if they raced back south. Maddy envisioned a finely delineated lane and any step that strayed from it would cause the entire thing to collapse, but it was there and they would be fools not to take the opportunity.

  Sadly, they were a pair of fools. With Victoria sniffling in a dark stall, Maddy knew the woman would go north to find the remains of her family or die trying. And not only would Maddy not stand in her way, she would go with her and watch her die, and likely die as well. She had made a promise.

  As if Victoria had picked up the thought, she came out of the stall red-eyed, but grim. She was ready to go on and immediately started for the hole in the glass. “Hold on,” Maddy said, thrusting Bryce’s pipe at her and heading for one of the stalls. Half a minute later, she stepped from the stall with a sigh and then jumped as she caught a reflection in the mirror.

  A woman had entered the bathroom. She could only be described as statuesque; tall with a swimmer’s shoulders. She was slim in the hips, but round in the bust. Her long, deep brown hair was in need of a brushing and her clothes were mere rags…

  “That’s me,” Maddy said, watching her lips move. She barely recognized herself. She raised a hand and tentatively waved at her reflection as if half-expecting it to rebel and maybe laugh at her.

  “What’re you doing?” Victoria asked. “We have to go.”

  With a last look at the strange girl in the mirror, Maddy went to the door and looked down at Victoria. It felt strange seeing as when they first met, Victoria had topped her by five inches. Maddy reached for the pipe and as her hand closed on it, her stomach let out a low rumble. This was at least familiar to her. Back in the old days, she had always been hungry. But even if Bryce’s bag hadn’t been lost in the last mad dash, there was no time to eat.

  Bryce, Bryce, Bryce! Her mind kept going back to him. Here she was, about to make yet another mad dash through a cruel, dangerous world and all she could think of was Bryce Carter. She even paused just inside the gaping hole in the lobby window as she pictured him…the new him that is. Tall and rugged and…

  “Do you see something?” Victoria asked.

  Maddy’s ears went red with embarrassment, and then with a touch of shame. No, she couldn’t “see” much of anything because she couldn’t stop thinking and worrying and fearing for Bryce. As she and Victoria were in a world of danger themselves, she was being foolish. “No. It’s nothing.” With that, she darted out through the window and into actual sunlight. Her eyes were so acute that she cringed from the first pure light she had experienced in days. She was not the only one who found the sunlight searing, the dead were shuffling into the shadows and into buildings. Suddenly the street was completely deserted.

  If possible, this was worse than having the street overrun with the dead. It felt as though a thousand pairs of eyes were staring down at them, and the two women instinctively crouched. “What the hell is going on?” Victoria whispered in the new and eerie silence. “You think that demon is out there, controlling them again?”

  Maddy stared out, her head slightly cocked. “No,” she answered. “It sends out a kind of pulse, which I can feel, too. And it’s not.”

  “Well, I don’t like it. It’s freaking me out a little.” Unless she was at a carnival, Victoria liked things to follow an established routine. Even the apocalypse, apparently.

  “I think this is a good thing,” Maddy said trying to bolster Victoria’s spirits; the woman was grimacing, setting more tiny lines permanently around her eyes. “At least this way we can use the streets without being molested.” As correct as that seemed, there was no way to know if it was true. The beasts might have slunk out of the sun, but that didn’t mean they had stuck their noses in a corner. She could feel them hiding in the shadows and staring out at the street and although their eyesight was crap, they weren’t blind, most of them, that is. “We’ll just have to be careful and keep down.”

  It was a good plan but Maddy didn’t rush to implement it. She feared being trapped out in the open and swarmed from all sides with nothing but the pipe as a weapon.

  As she hesitated, the unseen danger that had been with her for so long, began to grow on her, greater than ever. This new threat surrounded her and seemed to press in from every direction. She feared it so much more than the zombies that it forced her outside where she crept around the cars to the very middle of the street. Victoria kept close, holding onto the back of Maddy’s shirt. At first, the older woman shook like a lamb but to her credit, she didn’t freeze in place. She moved in a crouch along with Maddy and very gradually, as the sun mounted the sky, the two made their way up the block. As they went on, and the zombies didn’t come flying from the buildings in an unstoppable avalanche, Victoria’s fears dropped by degrees.

  The first creature to bar their way was not even whole. It was missing the lower half of its body, but that didn’t stop it from dragging itself from beneath a minivan, leaving a trail of black blood and some sort of septic sludge behind it. Maddy didn’t even kill it. She skirted it and kept going. Victoria did the same, though she did so with her face shriveled, prune-like; the gunk sliding from its torn-open intestines smelled vile.

  More of these forgotten half-creatures came at them and for the most part, Maddy hurried by them, pushing the pace until Victoria’s legs were cramping and her back made the crouch a torture. Still, the older woman kept up. The real zombies were in hiding and they were making good time—at the rate they were moving they could be home by lunch. In her mind, this was their first bit of luck they’d had in days.

  But it wasn’t luck. It was a trap and Maddy knew it. Her psychic meter kept redlining until she took a quick turn down an alley. This gave her mind a reprieve, but it didn’t last and soon she had to turn again as the trap closed in once more.

  She just didn’t know how to get out of it without turning back. Further out, she could sense that every direction was blocked, save for the very slim lane to the south. With her fear mounting, she took them along a crazy route—they went north then south, east then west, then east again. Turns were made with little forethought, just in case there was some kind of demonic mind reader after them.

  But always the darkness drew in closer. It felt so much like a noose that finally, she couldn’t take it anymore and she stopped. “We have to go around a little.” This was a bald-faced lie. They had no choice but to turn back. Alone, Maddy could probably get around the trap, but there was no way to do it with Victoria in tow. This was as far north as the woman was going to get, at least for the time being.

  “Really?” Victoria said, lifting up slightly and peering over the hood of a minivan. She couldn’t see anything amiss. The sun was still blazing overhead and the streets were clear.

  “Trust me. We’re walking into a trap and if we go on…” We’ll die… “It won’t be good. I think it’s best if w
e go back for a few blocks.”

  Victoria gave her a close look, squinting against the strong sunlight. “Is there really a trap or do you just want to go back for him?”

  Maddy had done her best not to think about Bryce. When she did, her world grew dim, and she felt a grinding pain deep within her. She wanted more than anything to go back for him, but she was fulfilling his promise, as best as she could. At least she thought she was. They had left Bryce behind to the south and their only way free was in that direction? Was her subconscious working against her? She liked to think she was her own master…and besides, Bryce would catch up. Maddy hung everything on that one hope. She told Victoria, “This is for you. Now come on. We don’t have much time.”

  The pace of time suddenly picked up. The trap was closing rapidly and she had no time to argue.

  Victoria could sense Maddy’s mounting anxiety and knew she was right on every level. And yet they were so close. The Empire State Building was now visible above the skyline and there on the corner was the Athenian Café where Tessa had always gotten what she called a “Jy-ro” no matter how many times Victoria had corrected her. They were only a few more miles from home.

  “Maybe they’re just after you,” she said to Maddy. “Maybe if I went on alone, it would be okay.”

  “Alone and unarmed?” Maddy shook her head. She would fall victim to the first zombie she ran across. On the other hand, Maddy would be relieved of her promise. Honor would be satisfied. “I won’t stop you but I strongly suggest you come with me.” Victoria looked over the minivan once again, hungry to go on, to find the remnants of her family. She hesitated something they had no time for. “Come on! Make up your mind.”

  The urgency in Maddy’s voice was enough to kill the courage it took to go on alone and her shoulders slumped. She wasn’t psychic like Maddy, but she had the sinking feeling that she was as far north as she was ever going to get. She kissed her palm and blew a kiss up the street, before turning around. Tears filled her eyes and her vision was just compromised enough that she didn’t see an aluminum can on the ground.