Anarchy

by Peter Meredith

  “They’ll drop on us,” Maddy told him. “We could try the back stairs. With everyone heading down that direction, I bet the zombies followed them right out the door.”

  This proved to be true for the most part. They came across a few stragglers which were quickly killed. Once outside, the pair discovered that the escape of the building’s tenants had been less of a success than they had realized. Maddy counted thirty partially eaten corpses. There were a few clumps of bodies, but most were spread out. It had been every man for himself.

  “I need my weapon,” Bryce said, doing his best to ignore the bodies. He had brought death with him when he had climbed up the side of the building; these corpses were on his head.

  In silence, the two jogged around the building to the front where the army of the undead was breaking up. Many had already slunk into the shadows giving the two a direct shot to where Bryce’s pipe poked up out of a shattered car window. He slid it out with a screech that was pretty much drowned out by the great wailing moan of hundreds of zombies. As the two hadn’t done anything to conceal their presence, every zombie within eyesight rushed back out into the street.

  Maddy led Bryce out of there, picking the best route through the creatures. Her foresight as well as their speed made the escape both possible and relatively easy, and soon the two were blocks away, loping along to where they had left Griff and Plinkett.

  When they saw the church, Bryce’s face clouded over. Here too, were mounds of bodies. Stinking corpses were piled at the church doors which were broken open and hanging oddly. More were heaped up by the dozen beneath a smashed-in window. A battle had taken place here. It was a battle lost.

  Inside were more corpses and not all of them had been zombies. Because the zombies had feasted on them, the dead humans were all but unrecognizable. They were only able to identify Father O’Lyn by his blood-stained vestments and Agent Plinkett by his recently new shoes. The rest of his body was buried beneath the zombies he had killed in his final moments.

  Of Agent Griffin Meyers there was no sign.

  Bryce walked around the room, his gut sinking. “The lock on the door.” This half-statement was heavy with implication. The deadbolt was drawn back; the door had not been locked at the time of the attack.

  “Yeah?” Maddy replied, despite knowing exactly what Bryce was getting at. “I can see the future, not the past. And he wouldn’t have done this.”

  “I agree. At the same time, he said he could feel the demon’s power, that it was making him want to do things.” They both stared at the lock, the perfectly intact lock amidst the shambles of the door.

  “We don’t know what happened here,” Maddy said, raising her voice. “He was able to resist the demon before. Besides, it may not matter. Chances are we’ll never see him again.” This brought them both low. Death had been chipping away at them from the very start, taking people all around them. “Maybe it’s better he’s not here. Maybe he’s got more of a chance on his own. We’re like a magnet for this crap.”

  With a loud, echoing thus, Bryce dropped down into a pew, his knees jutting up, his head in his large hands. He sat there, mentally and spiritually exhausted. “Nothing has changed. I thought once we killed that Spider Demon the darkness would’ve receded like when we killed the black demon. But it’s still all around us.”

  Maddy was about to reply when she felt the slightest quivering in the air. A second later, Bryce felt it as well. He stood, pipe in hand, his eyes searching the wreck of a church where the shadows were deep…and moving. One of these shadows detached itself from the rest and moved closer. This body moved in such utter silence that at first Bryce thought he was seeing an illusion or perhaps a dream creature like the Wha-de had been.

  “Nothing has changed,” it said. As it drew closer, Bryce saw that it wasn’t an it at all, it was a he, a very slender he who topped six foot by a few inches. Judging by the violet color of his eyes, his unnatural attractiveness and the self-assured way he carried himself, Bryce knew he was one of the Chosen. “Nothing has changed because you refuse to change it,” the man accused.

  Chapter 43

  “Let me guess,” Bryce said, sitting back down on the hard pew. “Magnus sent you to pester us.”

  “Yes and no,” the man said, coming closer and appraising first Bryce then Maddy. His violet eyes lingered on her as he answered Bryce, “He asked me to do a little favor for him, but I have a dog in this fight, too. We all do.”

  Maddy didn’t care for the way he wouldn’t stop staring and a part of her wanted to slide out her axe and teach him manners. She resisted, barely. The unwanted attention made her snippy. “Is this your ‘oh-so-scary’ way of telling us that the missiles are still coming?”

  Bryce snorted, “Haven’t they been heading our way for days now? I’m starting not to care.”

  A pained expression crossed the man’s sharp almost cartoonishly perfect features. “I’m screwing this up. Let me first introduce myself. My name is Aladair 1722.”

  “It is not,” Maddy snapped. “That’s not your name or your number.” She was oddly outraged. In the old world of a week before, it was considered nothing for a woman to shave a few years off her stated age or a man to embellish his high school football heroics. But “Aladair” was one of the Chosen. Arrogance among them was a given; lying was taboo.

  “My name is my own,” he answered, stiffly. “Aladair is what you may call me. And as for my number…it’s only a number.”

  That wasn’t true either. As little as Maddy knew about such things, the numbers either formed or were indicative of a pecking order of sorts and she could tell by the vibe coming from him that he wasn’t close to being part of the seventeen series. She guessed he was no higher than a ten, though this wasn’t something she felt it was right to ask about.

  “My purpose, as you have guessed, is to deliver a message from Magnus. He wants me to ask you nicely for you to continue your mission. My own message is: what the hell? Nukes are coming! Maybe not this afternoon or tonight, but they are coming!

  “What can I say, we’ve been busy,” Bryce drawled. “Perhaps he should’ve been helping us instead of sending useless messengers. No offense, but if he was so worried, then maybe he should’ve sent a few of the chosen to help us with that last demon.”

  Aladair shook his head, grimacing so that his long narrow nose looked pinched. “That’s not his way. He expects us to fight our own battles and overcome our own obstacles. The nukes are different, of course, as they will take us all out.” He gestured to a statue of Jesus on the cross that hung above the church’s altar and then clasped his hands together. “Please do what’s being asked of you. I know you don’t know me or care about me, but what about little Lenny?”

  “His name is Billy,” Maddy said, glaring.

  “Yes, Billy. And what about your dear friend Griff? And sweet Tomika? And Nichola Lines? She’s proven to be a survivor once again.”

  These last words sent a shiver up Maddy’s spine as she remembered sitting in the doorway of a green helicopter. In the dream she had looked back and saw Nichola and that exact thought—that she had once more proven to be a survivor—had crossed her mind.

  She realized that she had missed some of what he had been saying. It was no matter as Aladair was only naming distant relatives, friends from the past, and anyone she or Bryce might have some connection to in hopes of swaying them. He seemed to know a great deal about the two.

  “How do you know all this?” Maddy asked, giving him a hard, piercing look. It was a ‘I dare you to lie to me’ look. “Did Wha-de tell you? And how do all of you Chosen types keep finding us? If Wha-de’s power is anything like mine she can’t just pinpoint any time and any where to see. Right? Or is there a bloodhound type creature among you?”

  “We are not ‘creatures,’ thank you very much. And I don’t know how Magnus comes by his information. He knows and that’s good enough for me and it should be good enough for you, as well.”

  Bryce thumpe
d his pole, saying, “It’s not.”

  Aladair shrugged with great exaggeration. “I don’t know what to tell you. All I know is that nukes are coming and only you two can stop them. How and why are above my paygrade.” He looked back and forth between the two before asking, “Well? Are you going to let everyone in the city, including yourselves fry, or are you going to do something to stop it?”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” Bryce said, answering for both of them.

  A devilish grin broke out across Aladair’s face. “Good. You better hurry. Your helicopter arrives in exactly nineteen minutes.”

  “Helicopter?” Maddy and Bryce exclaimed as one.

  “Yes. You’ve heard of a helicopter, haven’t you? A great big green thing with spinny blades. One will be at the Federal building in eighteen minutes and thirty seconds. Magnus set it up. Don’t ask me how. Just get running. Go!”

  He wasn’t lying, at least about the helicopter. To Maddy it seemed that Aladair had woven dainty little lies through everything else he had said from the very beginning, and if she’d had the time, she would’ve tied him to a chair to sort through them all. Bryce grabbed her hand and pulled her from the church, only letting go the moment they hit the street, which was absolutely jammed with cars.

  Without a word, the two began an Olympic level steeple chase, running up and over lines of cars or hurdling them altogether. They dodged corpses and piles of rubble. They ducked beneath downed cables as well as an immense crane that had fallen across their path. Thankfully, the zombies were mostly hidden away from the slowly setting sun, and it was only when they ran through the deeper shadows of the tall buildings that the pair had to worry about the dead. Even then, no zombie could match their torrid pace. Their fantastic sprint amazed Maddy even as she was running it.

  They were churning out four-minute miles one after the other. She kept waiting for that moment when the fire in her lungs would become too much, or when her legs would turn to lead, and she’d be unable to push herself along. She kept waiting for her heart to call it quits and simply seize up in her chest, or her head to go light and for her to faint. But none of that happened. She ran as if she’d been born to run, as if she’d been training for years, as if she were feather light.

  And it felt wonderful.

  Despite the impending doom of nuclear holocaust and her grief over the loss of so many good people, and her fear over what she would find when they reached the Federal Building, she smiled, her teeth flashing white. Running like this was sheer joy. With her new lab-created, test tube physique, she was about as unnatural as a person could be and yet nothing felt more natural than racing through Armageddon.

  Her smile only dimmed when her sharp ears caught the wup-wup-wup of an approaching helicopter.

  “It’s early!” she cried.

  Bryce didn’t think so. Daniel Magnus had a long history of matching his stated goals with reality to a T. If Magnus had told Aladair they would have nineteen minutes, it would be nineteen minutes on the nose. This was his conscious mind thinking. Subconsciously, he increased his speed. He had been tooling along at about eighty percent; now he was at ninety. Next to him, Maddy began to feel the burn in her lungs and there was just a hint of lead building in her long legs. She fought through it.

  They were close enough to see the wall that they had fought to save, and there were the front doors and the shattered window, and there was the…a great shadow swept over her. High above, the helicopter was circling, looking for a place to land.

  “We’ll have to attempt the front doors,” Bryce said.

  Maddy said nothing though her breath did hitch in her chest. There were zombies everywhere. Even without the pulse of the Spider Demon, they were still laying siege to the building. It was a loose, chaotic, hit or miss siege, which was fortunate for them. There were dense pockets of zombies here and there, all of whom were staring up at the helicopter. Those outside were oblivious as Maddy and Bryce raced in and around them. It wasn’t until they reached the steps to the building that they were seen.

  A ‘sniffer’ caught their scent and let out a howl. With its flame-red hair and grey, mutilated face, it was ugly even for a zombie. Bryce struck it down with a single swing of his pipe and without slowing, he charged into the dim lobby. They had no time for a battle, especially against a hundred of the creatures. Just as the zombies were outside, the zombies here stood in clumps; some by the elevators, some by the doors, some by the stairs. A number of them were staring out a window transfixed by a prism of sunlight reflecting from a building across the street.

  As he entered through the gaping hole in the glass, Bryce let out a bellowing war cry that shook dust from the ceiling, and had every zombie turning towards him. The long, open room was shadow cast and gloomy, and what light there was seemed to come from Bryce. He appeared vibrantly alive and an actual glow flowed from him, and when he leveled his pipe and roared into the zombies at the elevator doors, there appeared a strange flash.

  His aim behind the war cry had been to affect just those zombies, to bring them shuffling away from the doors. He knew Maddy would need room to get them open. She needed time as well and Bryce supplied it by standing among the zombies he had bowled over and laying about with his pipe.

  Maddy ducked as the metal whistled an inch overhead and then she was at the first elevator, her ice axe in hand. Thunk! She sunk the spike perfectly into the thin line separating the doors and then pried it back. Seeing the elevator was five floors above her head was a relief. Had the doors opened onto it, the two would’ve been trapped. The narrow ladder going up sat against the side wall; she leapt for it, yelling over her shoulder for Bryce to hurry.

  “Just a second!” he cried, sounding more like a hen-pecked husband dreading the next chore on his list rather than a man fighting fifteen zombies at once. Ignoring the whipping pipe that crushed skull after skull, the creatures pressed in all around him, pushing closer and closer, giving him no time to break away and make a proper run for the ladder. He would have to wing it and hope.

  Spinning, he took two quick steps and was at the open shaft. Without a word, he tossed the pipe up into the darkness and leapt for the ladder. Immediately, he started up, but he was now a big brawny man with feet to match. When he had come down the same ladder the day before, his feet had barely fit on the rungs, now his toes kept snagging on the rungs, and he had only gone up five or six feet before the first zombie launched itself at his legs.

  Its grip was strong and its bite was worse. Teeth chomped down on his calf, easily tearing through the silk and into his muscle. Bryce kicked it away, only to have a second and a third fly at him. The first smashed into him but lost its hold on his thigh. The next found a handhold on the waist of his pants and it too bit down. Before he could kick this one away as well, two more flew through the air.

  Maddy, who had caught Bryce’s pipe, looked down to see him barely holding on to the ladder with five hundred pounds worth of zombies pulling him down. He was seconds from falling. “Hey!” she cried and leapt down and out, catching the main cable with one hand and swinging the pipe with the other. The end of the pipe connected and with one blow two of the beasts fell. More tried to take their place; however, she fended them off with the pipe, swinging in short chopping strokes until Bryce managed to kick away the last of the creatures.

  With an easy kick of her body, Maddy flung herself back to the ladder and after sliding the pipe through the back of her sports bra, she shot upward, leaving Bryce cursing and grunting over the tiny ladder. At the third floor, she slid the ice axe from the waist of her yoga pants and once more sunk it home between elevator doors and pried back. Just as the doors opened, the sound of the helicopter landing on the roof, a shivering Thud, reverberated down to them.

  “Hurry!” she yelled down the shaft.

  “I’m trying, damn it!” He looked somewhat ludicrous on the tiny ladder and a number of jokes concerning trained bears came to mind.

  This really wasn’t the time
and reluctantly she bit them back. “I’m practically mature,” she muttered, marveling at her restraint as she climbed out into a dark hallway. Here she paused momentarily with her head cocked, seeing a sliver of the future: Standing tall with a cold wind whipping her long dark hair around, she watched the giant green helicopter filling with people. Billy was not one of them.

  “Save me two spots,” she spat out over her shoulder as she ran for the stairs, which she took two at a time. Up she went for three floors before she came to a pair of young men with baseball bats acting as guards. One beamed a flashlight into her face. “Do you mind?” she said, in what was for her a peculiar voice. The old Maddy would’ve snapped this in over-the-top outrage. The new Maddy had purred out the words, using her new-found charisma and beauty in a naturally underhanded way.

  She was sexy and she knew it, and she knew how this affected men. The light shifted away. There was a quick apology and an awkward moment. A tall statuesque model was the last thing either had expected coming up the stairs, and before they could even think about challenging her, she was on the stair below them so that the two men were still a hair taller.

  “I’m looking for a boy. His name’s Billy. Skinny, with curly brown hair.”

  “Everyone is on six,” one of the two said. “But we’re not supposed to let outsiders in. I can’t let you go any further.” He couldn’t stop staring which undermined this declaration.

  Maddy unfurled a white smile. “We’re with the government.”

  “We?”

  “My partner is right behind me.” They looked past her and as they did, she eased between the two and started up again. “He’ll explain everything.” One of the men huffed in confusion, spluttering about rules, but she was already gone, racing up the stairs, leaving them for Bryce to deal with. At full speed she ran to the sixth floor and burst onto another dark hall, where she again paused, this time to draw in a huge volume of air through her nose, taking in hundreds of intermingled scents.