That was it.
And he couldn't change what was next.
All he could do was hope.
17
(Hurry.
Hurry.
Hurr....)
THE SOUND DRIFTED AWAY as he grew closer. Whether that meant it was dying off completely, or simply being muffled around him, he couldn't tell. He suspected the latter.
He needed the former.
He and Aaron – the cowboy with Hope slung over his shoulder, unconscious and limp – got to the closed hatch that led to the sleeping area. It was secured with a belt – the same way Christopher guessed the one to the kitchen must have been held shut.
Aaron looked at him. "Want me to open it?" The cowboy had produced a short but very sharp-looking knife from somewhere.
Christopher nodded. Aaron slashed the belt.
Christopher wondered how close the hordes were.
He spun the wheel.
The door opened.
He saw Lizzy. The two-year-old had been standing against the door.
(Hurry.
Hur –)
She fell down. Crumpled into a ball on the floor. Eyes shut, looking for all the world like a normal toddler who had crashed after the world's most extreme sugar high.
And as she did something leaped out of the room beyond her. Straight at Christopher. A white and black blur. Something that weighed slightly less than he did, but what there was of it was all muscle.
And it was angry.
The snow leopard jumped at him, claws bared, teeth gleaming.
Sally growled, and the growl was one of pure rage.
18
THE SNOW LEOPARD LANDED with both paws against Christopher's chest, so high they were almost on his shoulders. They drove him down, slammed him to the floor of the bunker.
He almost let go of the remote. Almost let it clatter away into the hall.
That would have been doom.
Sally's face was inches from his. Snarling, drool dripping in thick ropes against his face.
Then the snow leopard blinked. Something passed over its eyes. Not recognition, exactly. Nothing so clear or defined. Something deeper. Perhaps an understanding that Christopher was something still unChanged in a world transformed.
The creature, he knew, was no longer what it had been. It was no longer the protector. No longer the friend.
It was simply a snow leopard again.
It looked up. Growled deep in its throat. Aaron took a step toward it, knife flashing in the light of the corridor.
Christopher whispered, "Don't."
He regretted it immediately. Sally looked back at him. Leaned in so close that hot breath washed over him. Whiskers tickled his face. He wanted to sneeze.
Sure. Sudden movements with a hundred-and-fifty-pound attack cat on you. Great.
He bit back the sneeze. Felt like his face was going to implode.
Then, suddenly, the weight was gone from his body.
The cat loped off down the short corridor that led to the wet room. Away.
Gone.
Aaron looked at him, stunned surprise on his face.
"What the hell is going on, son?"
"Not now."
Christopher scooped up Lizzy's tiny form. Tried not to think of the other child it reminded him of.
Little Carina. Beautiful. Small.
Changed.
Axe in her forehead.
Beyond her, he saw the also-unconscious form of Lizzy's mother: Maggie.
He shoved the remote in his pocket. Slung Maggie over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, then managed somehow to get Lizzy under his other arm. It was awkward, and he almost fell over twice in the maneuver. The only thing that kept him from pitching onto his face was pride – he'd be damned if he was going to trip in front of Aaron.
He slogged his way back into the corridor. Toward the wet room. "Stay close."
"Don't have to keep telling me that."
"What can I say? I'm needy."
The kitchen was a straight shot from the sleeping area.
The hatch was open.
There was no one in the kitchen.
The others were gone.
19
CHRISTOPHER KEPT MOVING. In large measure it was simply a matter of momentum. He was going in this direction; he would keep going in this direction.
Inertia is a great substitute for thought. Before the Change it kept people in bad relationships, in dead-end jobs, in any number of situations they could have left. Now it just kept Christopher's feet pounding forward.
Even though there was nothing to move forward to.
And that saved his life. Because in another moment he would have left. He would have turned and gone looking for Mo and Amulek and Theresa and Buck. Would have left the TV remote – what he had made it into – with Aaron and the little girls and gone looking for the others.
It's the right thing to do, after all.
For some reason he thought of Dorcas. The farm woman who had sacrificed herself for the group.
He thought of Derek – Ken's son who had thrown himself to a death, and worse, to save his mother.
Of Sally, gone.
Of Ken, strange and alien.
Of all they had lost. An entire world.
And he ran forward. Into the empty kitchen.
And then, suddenly, the not-empty kitchen.
20
CHRISTOPHER REMEMBERED rooting around in the bunker for supplies. Remembered bending over to look for something, and feeling an arrow at his cheek. Wondering how Amulek could have hidden from him, snuck up behind him.
Now he knew.
The side wall of the kitchen, near the back, split open silently. Beyond was another room, smaller than the kitchen but still roomy enough to hold Amulek, Mo, Theresa, and the still-unconscious form of Buck.
Amulek beckoned for them to come.
Aaron started forward.
"Wait." Christopher couldn't let him get ahead. And he wasn't ready to hide. Amulek had intuited that hiding was the next step of Christopher's plan – if you could even call it that – but he wasn't ready to go into that small room. Not yet.
He heard a sound.
It bounced in from the direction of the bunker's entrance. Grunting. Trilling.
The sound of footsteps.
The horde had arrived.
"Whatever you're going to do, son, do it fast," said Aaron.
Christopher spun. He dropped Maggie and Lizzy, then slammed the hatch shut.
And heard something slam into it on the other side at the same moment.
21
THE ZOMBIES WERE FAST. Far faster than normal humans. They could spew acid that – near as Christopher could tell – burned through anything. And some of them had charming little buzz saws for faces that would turn the steel of the hatch to so much jagged metal in a matter of moments.
"E kare." Mo called quietly, weakly, from the hidden room. "Come. At least be with us. Fight with us at the last."
Christopher didn't move.
Aaron tugged at his sleeve.
Christopher still didn't move. He listened.
"Come on, son. We should go."
Christopher shook his head. "They decide to come in, then they'll come in and we're dead no matter what we do." He kept listening.
Shuffles. Scratches and scrapes.
But they were different than the last time the zombies had come into the bunker. That time, they had streamed in as an unstoppable river of death. Only Ken – in his own way as alien as they, and infinitely more frightening – had saved them.
But now....
The scratching on the other side of the hatch didn't sound determined. Didn't sound focused. It sounded like the demented clawing of a child who has found an obstacle it's not quite sure how to deal with. No, less. An animal, reduced to base instinct. A dog left in a room too long, needing to piss. Knowing it should leave, scratching the door to pieces then leaving a puddle all over the floor in spite of its e
fforts, then skulking off into the corner, confused and ashamed and not really sure why.
"You hear that?" Christopher said.
Aaron listened. He frowned. "What's going on out there?"
Not my imagination. He hears it, too.
"I think I know."
He looked at the remote in his hand. At Hope. At Lizzy.
"I think I know how to stop this. At least some of it."
"You gonna explain that, son?"
"After."
"After what?"
Christopher pressed his ear to the hatch.
Scratch. Scratch-scratch. Scraaaatch.
Sounded like a lot of them out there. Dozens? A hundred?
"After they leave."
If they leave.
He thought they would.
Hoped they would.
Please, God, let me be right on this. We could use a break, and that would be fair, after all the crap You've put us through.
But he thought of the Bible school he'd attended when he was fourteen. And thought of the one great lesson he'd learned during his time there: God may or may not be real, He may or may not even be loving. But "fair" was not something He seemed to worry overmuch about.
22
THE SOUNDS WENT ON a long time.
Christopher didn't know how long. Not really. It seemed like hours, but it could just as well have been minutes or days. There was no way of telling time, not here in the bunker, with the lights ever bright and no sun or moon to give a hint. He put Lizzy down at his feet. Motioned for Aaron to prop Hope beside him.
Aaron did, then went to help tend to Mo.
"How is he?" asked Christopher. Only then did he realize that Mo was no longer being looked after. Instead, Amulek and Theresa had stripped off Aaron's shirt and were working on binding a nasty wound on his shoulder: the spot where Mo had shot him.
Aaron was white-faced as they worked, but he didn't make a sound. Mo was propped up on a wall nearby, and his face was just as impassive. But Christopher sensed an admiration in the Māori, one warrior to another.
Scratch....
Scratch....
Those weren't the only sounds. Things fell in the other room. The sounds of items breaking, of boxes tumbling to the floor, of glass shattering – all these made it through the thick metal of the hatch.
Then, slowly, they ceased.
Christopher realized that Aaron was standing beside him again. The older man's ear pressed against the hatch as well.
"Think they're gone?"
"I think so."
"They could have just come in. Burned in or chewed in."
"I know."
"But they didn't."
"I know."
"And you know why they didn't." It wasn't a question.
Christopher nodded. "I think so. I'm pretty sure."
"You care to enlighten us now?"
Christopher looked at Mo. "When I was in the hospital part of the bunker earlier, I thought I saw an ultrasound machine. That right?"
Mo nodded. He pushed himself painfully to his feet. Torn bits of cloth shrouded his hands completely. He had fought off one of the zombie buzz saws with his bare hands, and Christopher doubted he would ever use those hands again.
He kind of doubted it. And for some reason that hit him harder than many of the deaths he had seen. To die was one thing. To Change another. But for a hunter – a warrior – to lose his hands?
God, what do we have to do to get through this?
"I do have one such machine, e kare," said the Māori. "I thought it might be prudent to have one: they are very useful for finding certain internal injuries."
"Good."
Christopher listened through the hatch again. Silence.
Which didn't mean there were no zombies out there. There could be more, one or two or a hundred, just creeping around on cat-zombie-feet.
He put a hand on the wheel that would open the hatch. Looked at Aaron. "Feeling lucky?"
23
HE SPUN THE WHEEL.
Cracked open the hatch.
Even if he was right about what was happening – about what he might have done with the girls – there was no guarantee he wasn't signing his own death warrant right now.
A crazy zombie was a deadly zombie.
Would a confused zombie be any less terrifying?
But when he looked through the crack he opened between hatch and jamb, he saw nothing but an empty room.
He opened it a bit wider.
Still nothing.
Wider.
Then open all the way.
The room was empty.
He stood absolutely still for a long time. His body was rigid, as though every muscle had tensed in aid of his hearing.
He heard only the silence of an empty place. The few breaks in the quiet came from behind him: Aaron's slightly ragged breathing, the near-silent whispers of Theresa's and Amulek's clothes as they shifted ever-so-slightly.
Christopher picked up Lizzy. Aaron, unbidden, picked up the still-unmoving Hope. He looked at Mo. "You up to guiding me through how to use the ultrasound?" he said.
Mo pushed himself to his feet. He went three shades whiter under the permanent gray/black of his tattoos, but made no sound, no complaint. Just nodded. "Of course." The tone of his voice made it clear that Christopher had just asked a foolish question.
Amulek and Theresa took up positions behind the hunter, ready to aid him. He waved them off. "See to the others," he murmured, as though he weren't the man with the greatest wounds – as though he weren't wounded at all. He pointed at Buck, then Maggie. Both still unconscious. "Bring them," he said. He looked at Christopher. "We should keep them with us, should we not, e kare?"
Christopher nodded with a certainty he didn't feel.
Amulek went to Buck. It was almost ludicrous, the disparity in their sizes was so great. But Amulek hoisted the big man onto his shoulders as though Buck weighed nothing at all. Theresa, wounded and barely managing to stay on her feet herself, could only grab Maggie by the arms and pull her along the floor.
A strange caravan, passing in a tight knot through a bunker that had been destroyed by a throng of zombies. But the destruction was haphazard. Tornado destruction: one thing utterly decimated, the next untouched. It wasn't the complete, focused attacks they had shown of late. It was....
They've lost something.
And Christopher thought – hoped – he knew what it was.
The hospital area – he guessed someone more pro-style than he was would call it an "infirmary," like in Star Trek or some other hard-core-geek show – was slightly less of a mess. Like the zombies hadn't cared to delve this deep into the bunker.
Like they'd gotten bored.
Or lost.
Please, let it be lost.
The ultrasound was tipped over, and for a moment Christopher worried it might be broken. If that were the case he'd have a helluva harder time convincing his friends of what was going on.
I'll have a helluva harder time convincing me.
But when he tipped it back onto its wheels and pressed the sequence of buttons Mo directed him to, it turned on. The monitor showed the operating system boot screen, then went to the view seen in countless television shows and movies: a wide, inverted cone on a field of gray, with a series of numbers and letters along the sides, top, bottom.
"What now?" asked Aaron.
Christopher had put Lizzy on the floor next to the machine. Now he hoisted her up and put her on the closest examining table. She was only wearing a diaper, her belly exposed, and he pushed the ultrasound wand against her stomach.
"Now," he said, "we see what's living inside her."
24
HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT he'd expected.
No, that's not true. You know exactly what you expected. It just wasn't this.
All he got was grays. Grimy-looking, slimy. Pockets of black that he figured were organs or voids or something like that.
Dammit, Jim, I'm a post-apocalypti
c survivor, not a doctor.
Holy crap, Christopher, what's up with the Star Trek references?
"Um, son, you planning on showin' us something?" Aaron didn't sound exasperated – not exactly. But he did sound a bit hurried. Made sense. If life had taught all of them anything in the past days, it was that death was always coming. Rest and respite were short-lived illusions.
The things had left.
They would be back.
It was only a matter of when. Not if.
"Just... just... give me a sec."
He moved the wand over the girl's stomach. Her chest. Wondered for a moment if doing that might give her cancer or something.
Don't be stupid, Christopher.
Where is it?
Is it even here?
It has to be.
Aaron's hand closed over his, and he realized he hadn't just been passing the wand over her body, he'd been whipping it back and forth. Moving it so quickly it left friction burns on Lizzy's stomach, her chest. He hadn't even been looking at the monitor. Hadn't looked, because he had known.
Not there.
It's not there.
Oh, shit, what do we do now?
Aaron's hand was firm. Callused. Strong. He took the wand away. "Son, whatever you were looking for isn't there."
Christopher stared dully at his hands. Realized suddenly how much he had hoped for this moment. Not in a "gee-golly-it's-Christmas-I-hope-I-got-a-pony" way, but in the way a cancer patient might hope for a miracle cure. The way a death row inmate might hope for that last-second call from the governor.
And now... nothing.
Aaron put the wand back in its holder. Went to turn off the ultrasound.
Christopher's eyes were downcast.
He saw the remote. Sticking out of his pocket.
At the same time, Aaron said, "We've got to have a talk about your little gizmo, though."
And that was enough. Hope flared, if only for a moment. Hope flared, and that momentary brightness brought memory to light.
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 75