It was just... the silence.
The popping of the fire behind them had faded. The river sighed and soughed around them, dampening all sounds and imparting peace to everything.
That peace was a lie, Christopher knew, and that was the thing the silence created. The lie that all this would end, that it would all somehow just stop. Like he could be wakened from a dream – called out of a nightmare by a nanny who would hold him and tell him that everything was fine, everything was fine, it would all be all right and the dreams weren't real.
The silence lied. There was always more to suffer, always more to lose.
(My baby.)
He felt himself falling into a rhythm that interspersed motion with despair.
Kick –
(lost Dorcas)
– kick –
(lost Ken)
– kick –
(lost my baby)
– and the cycle continued. Turned in on itself, a snake eating its own tail. Gagging, choking on its own death, but unable to stop. The world shrinking, shrinking, and finally it would end in one horrible moment of pain. A singularity of –
"Quit it."
Christopher blinked. Theresa was staring at him just over the level of the float. Her head bobbed up and down as she kicked, so he lost sight of her every few moments as she dropped out of view. But every time she came into view, she was staring – almost glaring.
"What? What are –" he said.
"Stop moping. It won't do anyone any good, and it'll just get more people killed."
He smiled. The smile, like the silence, was a lie. But sometimes the only truths we can find are in the lies we tell ourselves. "I didn't know you cared."
"I don't. But nothing's going to kill you until I do," she said.
"Pleasant thought."
"It won't be when I do it. I'm going to kill you once, then bring you back and kill you again. One death for each boob-grab."
He almost laughed. Probably would have if she hadn't mentioned "bringing him back." That part of the threat made him grimace. "You'll bring me back, huh? You'll have to get in line for that."
Theresa jerked – a sudden movement that his brain couldn't interpret until it was too late and the water she had splashed over the top of the float hit him right in the face.
"Cut it out, you spoiled little brat."
That reminded him of his parents. And in a strange way, the memory actually helped. It was abuse, and he knew how to deal with that. He grinned. "Didn't know you cared, Mommy."
She grimaced. "Mommy? So you're saying you have a thing for grabbing your mom's boobs? I take it back. You're not spoiled, you're a deeply disturbed perv."
"So's your face."
She laughed. Smiled, a smile that said she'd been caught off guard by the rejoinder. "What is this, kindergarten?"
"Maybe. And so's your face again."
The laugh was louder this time, in spite of the fact that it came between panting breaths as Theresa kept kicking, helping push them along better than he was doing.
"You two should just kiss and stop wasting time avoiding the inevitable," said Maggie. That made Christopher jerk – she had said so little of late, it was almost possible to forget she was even with them.
"Ewww," said Theresa. But she was smiling.
Christopher smiled back.
Kick, kick, kick.
The silence melted back into their midst.
But for some reason, it didn't seem quite so bad this time. The river flowed, taking them somewhere he couldn't imagine, couldn't dare to hope would end well.
But it was all right. For now, they were alive.
He glanced at Theresa. She wasn't looking at him anymore. Focused on getting them across the river.
He looked ahead. Focused as well. At least with his body. His mind dwelt on red hair, a smile, a person that he didn't completely understand – only knew he wanted to understand better.
85
SILENCE. RIVER FLOWING. The gentle water-sounds that are a universal call for humanity, as though the water says, "Peace – all has flowed to where it will, and will continue to flow until the deep waters, there to start the cycle anew."
Christopher fell into a kind of sleep. Thinking of friends lost, of friends found. Realizing that all the people he had spent time with before the Change had been false friends. Friends of convenience – spending time with each other because they were there. Either that or friends in the purpose of fun, of the moment.
But fun was gone.
The friends that were here were true.
The moment was sharper than it ever had been. Because the only guarantee was that moment. Nothing more could be counted on, nothing else existed.
There was here, there was now.
These friends... this family.
He realized he missed his parents. Not in the way that he had missed them when sent to his first school, so young and so far away. He didn't miss them with the sharp pain of parting, with the dull ache that spoke of his conviction that they had sent him away because he was worthless and unworthy of their love.
No, he missed the parents they should have been. He missed love, missed companionship. Missed the things that parents were supposed to provide, but that they had never given him – at least not past the age of five.
He glanced at Theresa. She had focused fully on the task ahead. No longer paying him attention, and that made him strangely happy. She would save him if he needed it, but would leave him to deal with the work of kicking across the river when he was able.
She relied on him to do his part. To carry his load.
The water streamed past him, and it was cold as ever. But somehow the numbness that had begun at fingers and toes and slowly made its way up his limbs no longer seemed so frightening. No longer seemed to matter. He had to do his part to get the group through all this.
He realized he had been given two things he had never had before. Purpose, and responsibility. He had hidden from both for his entire adult life. The closest he had come was his desire to have his baby –
(little girl, little Carina, I miss you, baby)
– with him. But even that had been a promise of responsibility. A duty owed, but never shouldered as the burden it would have been.
Now he had things to do. Jobs to accomplish.
People to love.
He looked at Aaron – a new father, of sorts. The kind of man who would demand you learn, you do. Would protect from whatever came.
He looked at Maggie. The mother figure to all of them. Even in her silence, she protected the babies. Even from the depths of grief, she spoke when the group needed to hear a steady voice.
Amulek. A stepbrother, found from another family but who had inserted himself into this one so flawlessly it was as though he had been born to it.
And, of course, Buck. Brother.
Dammit, I think I actually love the guy.
Buck caught him looking. Scowled. "Are you going to kiss me now?"
"If I went that way for anyone, it would be for you, Buck."
The scowl deepened, then cracked as Buck realized that Christopher hadn't said it with his usual sarcastic tone. Hadn't meant it as a jibe.
"Well...." Buck cleared his throat. "You try to touch my boob and I'll cut off your dick."
"Language," said Maggie. Aaron laughed. A gasping, exhausted laugh. But a laugh.
And there she goes. Mother.
He finally glanced at Theresa. She kept looking straight ahead – but he knew she was aware of him watching her.
"Thanks," he murmured. The river whispered around them. Caught his word and he wondered if she had even heard.
Then the corner of her lip twitched. So small a motion it was hard to see. But he had seen it.
A smile.
The river was cold around him.
But he felt warm.
And then he kicked, and felt his foot touch something. Another kick, and this time it planted in silt and mud. He had to pull it fr
ee.
He put his other foot down. Touched the bed of the river.
They had made it across.
86
THE HEAT WAS OPPRESSIVE, but bearable. About the same as sitting a bit too close to a bonfire on the beach.
More striking than the temperature was the general strangeness of standing here, in a place that had been alive so recently, but was now nothing but ashes underfoot, surrounded on every side by denuded trunks that speared into the sky and somehow seemed like the last rebellious symbols of a place that had lost itself to flame.
Like us. Reminders of life's last fight.
Ash was still thick in the air, drifting down from treetops that still crackled and occasionally burst with gunshot sounds. It looked like the beginning of a snowstorm in places – white flakes that drifted down in whirling, pinwheel falls. Caught by heated updrafts, spun about, then eventually settling as gravity won out over the remnants of the forest fire.
Darkness spread overhead: smoke from the fire that still blazed on the other side of the river, and from the fires that still burned on this side – blown in front of the wind that drove them ever west.
Christopher wondered if the fire would spread to towns, cities. Would Nampa burn? Meridian? Boise itself? There were no firemen to stop the fire before it threatened and then destroyed places where people had once lived.
He looked around. "Where now?" he said.
Aaron kicked a small stone. It scuttled across the black forest floor, came to rest next to the trunk of a dead tree. "Well, I –"
He didn't finish his sentence. A shadow dropped across his face, stopping him in mid-thought. The shadow made Christopher's guts coil.
It hadn't been the smoke. Dark clouds curled up the sky, dampened everything into a mockery of the twilight of a severe storm. But they cast a single, even shadow that coated all evenly. This shadow – it had been something else.
At first Christopher thought, It's a hawk. Maybe an eagle?
His mind rejected both theories. The shadow had been too slow. A languid movement across Aaron, then over the forest floor before disappearing in the trunks to the east.
And, more important, it had been too big to be a hawk. Much too big.
What now?
A thought struck him. Sudden terror on its heels. "Oh, dammit," he said.
"What?" said Theresa.
"The girls," he answered.
"What about them?" That was Maggie, holding Lizzy again while Buck had once more resumed his position as Official Hope Toter.
"They're broadcasting," he said.
"What do you mean?" said Buck. "We've got your doohickey."
"Yes," said Christopher, looking down at himself. His clothes were drying rapidly in the dry heat of the area. But parts of it were still damp, others dripping freely. "But my doohickey probably isn't waterproof."
He looked up. Tried to spot whatever had made the shadow. Saw only smoke. Then he looked at his friends. "The girls are going to call the zombies again. They'll know where we are."
He looked into the smoky forest. "They're coming."
87
"THE JAMMER'S GOING to be fine," said Buck. The words were ridiculous, and the way he said them – free arm akimbo, a look on his face that clearly said he thought Christopher was acting like a child – was infuriating.
"You ever drop a cell phone in the toilet, Buck? Spill your sippy cup across your Speak 'n Spell?" demanded Christopher. "Electronics don't do so well in the water."
Buck smirked at him. Drew something out of his pocket. It was dripping, and the sight of the water streaming out from between Buck's fingers made Christopher's stomach lurch.
Then Buck opened his fingers more. Something dropped a few inches, then jerked to a halt.
"I didn't want it to get ruined if we got caught in the rain again," said Buck. Then smirked again. "I told you it'd still work."
The jammer was dangling from Buck's fingers – enclosed in a plastic bag. And now that Christopher looked at it closer he could see that the bag was actually two bags. Buck had doubled up the bags to keep it completely safe from any water intrusion.
"I think I love you, man," said Christopher.
"Your boob-buddy is going to be jealous."
Theresa gritted her teeth. "Call me that again and me and Maggie won't be the only women here."
Christopher tried to think of something witty to say. Nothing came. A sharp crack from somewhere deep in the forest drew his eyes. Not the sound of the trees, still giving up the last bits of life as they fell to ash or their green hearts expanded beyond the bounds of their outer shell and exploded.
This sounded like... something walking. A tree not fallen, but pushed through. Perhaps shoved out of the way by something.
Many somethings.
Christopher looked back at Buck. "I think we should get going," he said. "Jammer or no jammer."
Buck nodded. "Yeah," he said. "You're right." He took a step, then stopped. Looked at Amulek. "You know where to go next?" he asked.
In answer, Amulek simply started walking north.
Then he froze.
Everyone looked in the direction of his gaze.
Christopher saw nothing at first. Just trees, smoke....
And something moving through them both. More than one thing.
He heard the growl.
88
THERE WERE A DOZEN of the things. Maybe more. It was hard to make out more than a blob of gray, hidden in the ashfall and the smoke. The smoke itself kept reaching searching fingers toward the group, tendrils drifting toward them, caressing them with its ghostly touch, then withdrawing. Playing with them. Daring them to live, knowing they would die.
The first zombie stepped into view.
No way of telling its real age, or even its gender. There was only black skin, bits of bone showing through at shoulder, at jaw, the ribs fleshless on the right side.
Its shoes had been red. Probably expensive. Now there were only flashes of the original red in the blackened remains. The plastics that had been woven into the cloth portion melted by heat, creating new shoes that had melded to the flesh beneath and would have had any normal person shrieking in pain.
The shoes moved forward. Dragging across the ground. Christopher couldn't tell if this was one of the "live" zombies, or one of the undead. It was moving slower than the "live" zombies tended to, but that could have been because of its injuries. Perhaps fire could slowed the things down the way even head wounds couldn't do.
One of the zombie's eyes was burned out. The other was whitened by death or by heat damage. It reminded Christopher of an egg, cooked too long. It leaked over the thing's cheek.
The zombie was headed toward them. Head cocked to the side, not looking directly at them. But there was no doubt it was headed toward the group.
It was followed by a mass of zombies. Pushing their way through curtains of darkness. Even slower than the leader, but still moving. Still moving.
Hunting.
There was a crack behind him. He turned and saw Amulek yank a four-foot branch off one of the trees. He was left with an ashy club, pointed at the end. He settled into an attack stance: low center of gravity, branch held in two hands with the point held forward like a spear. He moved sideways until he was standing between Buck and Maggie – and the little girls – and the approaching mass.
Christopher tore a branch loose as well. He couldn't do it in one yank the way Amulek did, but a few twists and it came off in his hand. He felt the loose shift of burnt bark under his fingers and knew that his club would be only a little better than bare hands. It had been burnt, nearly destroyed. It was probably as much ash as wood now – ready to fall apart with the first swing or stab.
Aaron didn't bother with a branch. He still had a knife – though how it had made it through crash and cross-river swim, Christopher had no idea. Regardless, the cowboy brandished it in his good hand. Like Amulek, he positioned himself between the throng and Buck and Maggie.
<
br /> Christopher moved to join them. A moment later, Theresa took a place beside him. No branch in her hands. Just fists at the ready.
More zombies came. Another five, then another ten.
Now there were almost twenty, total. Against five fighters. Maybe six, if they put down the girls and freed up every single adult.
Six versus twenty. No hope to stand up against them.
"Run," said Christopher. No one moved. Not even him. He said it again – screamed it this time – this time willing his feet to motion.
"Run!"
89
HOT. DIRTY. SWEATY. Breathless gasps that seemed to bring no oxygen, just more exhaustion.
Christopher's legs burned. His arms hurt, and the little girl in his arms seemed like she must weigh hundreds of pounds instead of the sixty or so he guessed she weighed in "normal" times. Buck had been holding her, but the third time he stumbled he finally let go of what remained of his pride and passed her to Christopher.
The run through the forest was beyond terror. Every other moment in the ongoing nightmare of the post-Change world had been a constant run, but this was different. Before it had been brief moments of terror, followed by a lull. Even if that lull had been a short one, at least it had been there. Had provided a moment to breathe, to stop. He had been hunted by the zombies – chased through several buildings, followed down an elevator shaft, through the gutted body of an airplane.
But this... the never-ending run through the forest. The endless rush to escape. It was eternity – and it had to be Hell, surrounded on every side by still-smoldering trees, ash crunching underfoot like the sighs of doomed souls.
The zombies that followed were slower than the survivors. Even now, even running lower on energy, the creatures were slower.
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 87