He shoved it back in his mouth. It wobbled but stayed in the socket.
Maybe it’ll grow back.
Maybe I can keep it.
Maybe monkeys will come out of my butt and shoot caramel apples out of their butts.
Someone grabbed Ken’s shoulder.
He looked over. The motion seemed to take a long time. Hours, if not days.
Buck was standing there, pulling him up one-handed while holding Hope in the crook of his other arm. She slept –
(the sleep of the dead the sleep of the undead)
– on his shoulder.
“We’re going!” Buck shouted. Ken knew he was shouting because he looked like he was shouting. But it sounded like a whisper. Everything sounded like a whisper.
Ken looked over the top of the seat in front of him. There was blood on the bar where he had bounced off it.
The driver, the redheaded savior, was standing at the front door of the bus. Half on, half off, her lead foot hanging out the door like she was trying to decide whether to jump out and leave the group to fend for themselves or not. She was talking into something. A radio?
She turned to the rest of the group and gestured to them to get moving, come on, we’re leaving, get moving.
Ken struggled to his feet.
His tongue felt the tooth.
Loose.
Wobbly.
He moved to the front of the bus.
Wondering what the new sound was.
The thrumming, thudding, pounding sound.
23
KEN FELT SOMEONE ELSE touch him. Maggie. She was smiling at him. Or trying to. Trying to look like everything was all right and they weren’t being chased by things that would give nightmares to the Devil himself.
“Come on, hon,” she said.
Ken nodded. Everything seemed thick, padded. Everything but the pain, which was a slick shard of glass slashing at his face, his neck, his back. When he stood the pain skipped on lightning feet down his left leg and he almost fell over. Buck’s arm tightened around his chest.
Ken saw Aaron holding onto Christopher, leading the kid out of the bus. Christopher was sobbing openly.
“What...?” began Ken. He didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. Everyone knew Christopher well enough to figure out the end – ends – of the question.
What happened to him?
What made him cry like that?
What can make him stop?
Buck shrugged. “We’ll sort it out later.” The big man had sounded so whiny and entitled when the survivors first found him. Now he was assured, calm, and kind. Ken wondered if the big man had changed, or if the world they had plummeted into had simply stripped away the negative camouflage he had been wearing and lain bare the real man, the good man he truly was.
Aaron and Christopher got off the bus. The thing rocked on the bits of spring that remained functional in its shocks.
“Who’s on the horn?” said Aaron. Ken realized that their driver – he was starting to just think of her as The Redhead – had something to her ear. Not a cell, it couldn’t be that. Cell phones had been infected just as surely and horrifically as the population. To get on the phone was to listen to madness given voice, to succumb to anguish and literally die of despair.
No, The Redhead was talking on something else. But it looked like a phone. Sort of. Ken finally realized what it was, and wasn’t too surprised he hadn’t figured it out earlier. He had barely seen it, and it was so surprising that his mind had blanked what few details his eyes had managed to capture.
It was a walkie-talkie. One that looked like it had been picked up from a Radio Shack or some hobby shop. Not military, but just a simple plastic case that probably housed a few transistors and a nine-volt battery.
Cell phones had become so ubiquitous it wasn’t unusual to see preteens that owned them, talking into their Nokias or iPhones while sipping Frappuccinos and feeling oh-so-grown-up before the first zit even marred their faces. Even police and paramedics used cells rather than their CBs half the time, so Ken couldn’t get too upset that he didn’t realize what The Redhead had in her hands the first time he saw it.
She said something. Ken saw Aaron bristle a bit, so he figured it was probably somewhere on the social niceties scale between “None of your business” and “Go suck it.” The Redhead hadn’t shown herself to be particularly cheerful or interested in refinement.
Ken allowed himself to be led off the bus. He saw Sally simply drop through one of the holes in the floor, emerging from under the side of the bus. The snow leopard still looked on guard, every single hair at attention. The cat approached Buck and Maggie as they helped Ken off the bus, licking first Liz’s trailing foot, then Hope’s. Satisfied, it stepped back.
But not far. And its hackles stayed high.
“How far are you?” said The Redhead into the walkie-talkie.
Ken thought he heard a voice, but it was small and faraway. He couldn’t make out what it said.
He looked behind the bus. Couldn’t see the thing that had clung to the undercarriage and nearly taken them out – had taken them out, now that he thought about it – but he suspected it was still coming toward them. Guided by some internal GPS, led by a sense impossible to define or understand.
The girls.
Ken looked at Hope and Liz. Silent. Still.
But were they asleep?
Or could they be busy behind closed eyes?
Calling for help?
Giving out locations?
He shuddered. He didn’t want to think about that, because that would mean his children – all of his children –were truly lost.
“Not good enough!” Ken looked back at The Redhead in time to see her stab at a button on her walkie-talkie and shove the device in a pocket. She looked at Christopher, who was still sobbing. “He gonna be able to move?”
“He’ll do what he needs to,” said Aaron. His voice sounded different than he had a few moments ago. Tighter. Ken wondered what the change was. Then realized this might be what the man sounded like when he was reporting to a superior. That Aaron was some kind of military or paramilitary was not in doubt. The only question was of the details.
Was The Redhead military as well?
Before Ken could ask, the sound came again. Thrumming, pounding.
... up...
... in...
... ive up...
... ive in...
give up
give in
Give up.
Give in.
The sounds grew stronger, both in his ears and in his mind, and with them came the realization that the survivors weren’t done running. Not by a long shot.
Another horde had found them.
24
A MOMENT LATER KEN realized that his assessment had been wrong. It wasn’t a horde.
It was three hordes. Maybe four.
Not a mega-horde, nothing like the one that had coated every outer inch of the Wells Fargo building and climbed sheer walls to get to the survivors.
No, this was a number of smaller groups. Maybe a hundred each. One came from each end of the street, effectively trapping them. A few hundred feet and counting.
Aaron stepped toward the nearest building, a storefront that proclaimed No Activation Fee and LOW LOW Monthly Rates!
But before he took more than a few steps, the still-weeping Christopher holding tight to him, he looked up.
Ken followed his gaze.
More zombies clambered over the building’s roof. It was a four-story building, and they were scrambling over the top, climbing down the sheer face of the office structure. As soon as they were within thirty feet or so they would cast themselves down to earth. Broken bones would heal, torn flesh could be ignored.
All that mattered was the hunt. The prey.
A quick look to the other side of the road verified that more zombies skittered like roaches over the five-story building there. Climbing over and down.
Sally crouched, ready to pounce
on the first zombie that came at the group, and Ken had no doubt the leopard would die for them – for the girls, in particular.
But he knew that even a predator like the big cat would quickly fall.
There was nowhere to go.
He looked at Aaron. The cowboy’s eyes were blank. Ken saw no plan there. Only death.
He looked at Maggie.
She held his hand.
It was not a hopeful gesture.
It was a goodbye.
25
THE REDHEAD BEGAN RUNNING.
Not a surprise, Ken thought. Most people will run, even when running is a doomed course. Even when running means only that you will die tired.
What surprised him was that she ran east – toward the larger, closer horde.
They started growling, running faster. As though they were lovers meeting, coming together after a long absence.
Give up.
Give in.
He didn’t hear Derek in the growls, didn’t hear the peculiar strength of his once-son’s call. But he knew that The Redhead was doomed.
She turned her head without stopping. “Come on!”
“What?” shouted Maggie, not bothering to hide the shock from her voice. It was the sentiment they all felt.
To their left, the zombies clinging to the building were about to jump. Sally moved toward the base of the structure. Snarling. The zombies didn’t seem to care. They readied to leap.
Now The Redhead did stop, if only for a moment. She looked at a watch on her wrist, the kind that was coated in thick black rubber, probably shock-resistant, waterproof, and able to stop small grenades.
Then she looked up and said, “Come with me or die.”
Maggie looked at Ken. She had never been a wilting flower, the stereotypical deferential wife who asked for permission before doing things. But she was asking him now. So was Aaron, he realized, and Buck as well.
They were all waiting. Waiting on him.
Ken looked at The Redhead. She was already turning to run again.
He nodded.
Buck began running, pulling himself and Ken and Hope toward The Redhead.
Maggie ran beside them, hands clasped around the carrier that tied Liz to her.
Aaron yanked Christopher along.
They ran, for the first time, directly toward a horde.
26
ONLY A FEW STEPS INTO it, Ken realized that perhaps “run” wasn’t the best descriptor. Everyone in the original group of survivors was wounded: physically, mentally, emotionally, or a combination of the three.
The few – like Buck and Maggie – who were not healing from grievous physical injuries were carrying insensate children and had to balance speed with care. The rest hobbled along as best they could.
Only Sally was unharmed, and even he held back, threading lithely between everyone’s legs, holding a tight orbit around Ken’s daughters at all times.
The Redhead ran, then turned back, then ran again. It was as though she couldn’t decide whether to abandon them to an unkind fate, or save them for a worse one.
The gas mask she had been wearing hung around her neck now, jogging up and down and side to side like a macabre second face. It was strangely reminiscent of the thing that had attacked them in the bus, with its facial distortions and extending mandibulae.
Not a comforting thought: the monsters were, at their core, not inhuman, but from human. Something must have acted on the human race to make them all change like they had, but the fact remained that the basic building blocks of those changes had been present in humanity’s genetic brick and mortar. Torn down and rebuilt, but still the framework was ours, and the monsters were built in the image of their predecessors.
Ken looked at the gas mask and knew he was looking at a darkly distorted image of himself; and at an image of what he still might become. A monster, both less and more than what he now was.
The Redhead kept glancing behind them. Not looking at the horde that was there, but up. Like she was waiting for air support.
Ken realized he was hoping for just that. Call in the Air Force, send in the Marines!
But there was nothing. No chup-chup of Black Hawks with thousands of rounds per minute spitting out of side-mounted Vulcan cannons, no high-pitched whine of F-14s dropping napalm to incinerate the enemy.
Just the wind. The growl.
Then a worse sound: wet thuds and thumps. Noises he had heard before. The sounds of unkillable things hitting the ground from heights too great for their bodies to withstand, bones and flesh shattering... and then rising up and healing.
The zombies were behind, to the sides. Falling from above.
The ones in the small horde ahead were spreading out. Thinning and widening like the lips of a mouth opening to receive strangely suicidal prey. Ken was struck again by how they moved: not a collection of individuals, not even as a coordinated group. They moved like....
He struggled to understand. To find a word.
Cells.
Each zombie was as the single structural unit of a larger creature. The individual – but not autonomous – cell of a creature so huge it could not be seen from Ken’s perspective, any more than a whale could be comprehended from the perspective of a barnacle on its fin.
The thing’s maw gaped ahead of them.
They were at its outer edges.
The things fell toward them, closing around them.
The thing was hungry.
And it must feed.
27
THE REDHEAD SCREAMED.
Ken heard the sound and thought it was fear. Then his perception shifted and he thought she was screaming in pain. Then he realized he was hearing neither terror nor agony.
Instead, The Readhead’s scream was one of betrayal. Rage. Unadulterated wrath.
She had a gun in her hand, a shiny black creature that seemed to hunch on her fist, waiting to sting those who offended her sense of what should be and what should not. Her gloved fist tightened and the bullets shot out, punching through the foreheads of several zombies with thunder-cracks loud enough to set Ken’s head to pounding.
The zombies – three of them – immediately went mad. Their heads exploded and became lopsided half- and crescent-moons dripping with pink and black gel. They turned on their once-fellows, on each other, on themselves.
They went from cells in a body to cancers in the organism. Killing everything without discrimination.
The Redhead shouted again. No more bullets. She threw the gun into the center mass of the zombies that hungered for them.
She was going to die or be Changed, and Ken could tell that she would do so cursing them with her last breath.
He looked at Aaron. The cowboy had an admiring light in his eye. It was different than the look he had given Dorcas: no tenderness, none of the sense that he wanted to hold and protect her. She didn’t need protecting, and would probably attack anyone who tried. So Aaron’s look was the frank admiration of one warrior appraising – and approving of – another.
One of the zombie’s grabbed The Redhead’s left hand.
She fumbled with her right for one of the machetes strapped to her back. The machete was in a scabbard, secured with a snap that she flicked open in an eyeblink. But Ken could do the calculations, could tell that she didn’t have time to clear the weapon.
She was determined to go down fighting. But she wouldn’t – couldn’t – win this fight.
She wasn’t going to make it.
28
FSHHHHHH...
... ssssss...
... WHUMP.
The sound came from behind, then beside, then before.
It was a bizarre noise, one that was utterly alien, one Ken had never heard before in person but which was nevertheless burned into his mind as a thing of fear.
No, not mere fear. It was a thing of terror, with all the heavy-laden meaning that word brought in a world after the tallest buildings had been reduced in number by two.
In the instan
t the sound passed he heard it in his mind, replayed in countless news reports and video games and movies. Media that only had one common thread: death. Sometimes focused, often indiscriminate, always violent.
Ken was a history teacher both by trade and inclination: a man often more comfortable in the precipitous moments of the past than the banal passages of the present. One weapon had arguably changed the face of geopolitics more than any other in the last hundred years. Not the nuke, not the submarine. Nothing so grand.
It was small, it was easily ported. It cost not millions, but mere thousands.
The rocket-propelled grenade.
The RPG had taken shepherds and nomads and turned them into warriors; had given untrained women a cheap way to kill entire squads of trained men in tanks or attack choppers. The United States – the United States that was, that had been, before the Change – had supplied RPGs to the Afghan Mujahideen guerillas in such numbers that, in trying to keep up with rising demands for heavy armored vehicles the Soviet Union had bankrupted itself into ruin and collapse. An economic end to a cold war, ushered in by what was essentially a metal tube with an explosive at one end.
RPGs had been used in Angola, in Vietnam. Russian forces in Chechnya were terrorized by men firing them from rooftops and basements. US forces had to deal with them in Iraq.
And someone had brought one to this fight.
He heard a line from an old movie, perverted by the Change: “Isn’t that just like a human: to bring an RPG to a zombie fight.”
All this flashed through Ken’s mind in a moment. In the instant when the sound came to his ears, the instant when he saw the contrail that signaled the passage of the RPG’s explosive warhead.
The white line passed right by him. If he had been fast enough, he could have reached out and swiped through the superheated air with his hand. He felt the heat of it, felt a few more of his hairs singe and disappear.
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 45