She resisted for a moment. He couldn't decipher the expression on her face, but thought it might be care. Concern. It almost seemed alien to her.
Theresa had lost her brother. He wondered if she had shut down part of herself when that happened. Not destroyed it, not cut it off. More like it was part of the house of her mind, a wing she had cordoned off and in which she had turned off all the lights because it would no longer be needed – could no longer be used.
What's happening to us?
What if we forget what we are?
The idea frightened him. The idea that the zombies might not be all that threatened; it could be the fact that the survivors – all of them, wherever in the world they were – were shutting off all that made them human.
What was the fight about, if not to save humanity?
What was the fight for, if humans had shut down that humanity of their own accord?
Ken hunched deep in the shadows that pooled at the back of the truck bed. Only a vague outline and the occasional animal glint of his eyes could be seen.
Christopher didn't let go of Theresa's hand.
She didn't let go of his, either.
102
DAWN DIDN'T ARRIVE. It came as a sleep, or a slow-moving disease. It bled through the smoke, pushed veins of red and orange into the sky.
They bumped along a back road, finally found pavement, then thrummed through that part of the country until Aaron turned them onto a main road. Christopher didn't know what road it was, or even where they were. He thought that they were still in Oregon, though close to the border with Idaho. But he couldn't be sure. He knew New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago. He was familiar with a dozen European cities.
He barely knew his own backyard. And even in this place, at a time where all those cities were barely images seen through a dark mirror, he was for some reason ashamed of that fact.
The truck chewed up the asphalt, and Aaron turned off the lights as the sun finally pushed through the thinning smoke. They were leaving the fire behind.
And more than one friend.
Christopher thought of Buck. He looked at Ken, still hunched in the corner of the truck, and wondered why it was that some people lived while others died. There was no rhyme, no fairness.
It just was.
Theresa squeezed his hand. "Hey." He looked at her. "Don't mope. You're alive."
The words came in her raspy voice, and carried an edge that implied she would kick his ass if he didn't listen. But her lips hinted at a smile.
He blew out a rush of air. Inhaled. He could still smell the smoke from the fires they were outpacing a bit with every passing mile. But there was the promise of clean air beneath it. The promise of a future where flame did not rule.
"Thanks," he said. She squeezed his hand again. "I'm growing on you, huh?"
She rolled her eyes. "Like a fungus. Or genital warts."
"See? You do care."
She let go of his hand. Still with that hint of a smile. He felt her hand letting go as a surprising loss. A bit more alone, a bit more afraid. He wanted to hold her hand again, but knew it wouldn't go over well. Instead he moved toward Ken.
"Should you –" began Theresa.
Christopher held up a hand. "It's okay." He turned to Ken. "Isn't it, Ken?"
He suddenly remembered saying something like this before. Walking along a street in Vegas, and a dog came rushing out of an alley. Snarling and slavering, its ribs stark against its skin. There was no question that it was a stray, and it was equally certain that it was very, very hungry.
Christopher had spoken like this to that dog. "It's okay. Easy, boy. It's okay, isn't it?"
The dog bit him on the leg. Left him with a scar he still had to this day. Luckily it wasn't interested in making a meal of him, and it ran off after that first bite.
But the bite had hurt. Christopher hoped his words to Ken would end differently. Because Ken, he suspected, would never attack and run. He would just attack and keep coming until the fight was over. Until either he or his foe was dead.
Ken looked at him. Recognition in his eyes, and that made Christopher relax a little.
"You okay?" he asked again.
Ken looked like he was thinking about it. Then nodded. "Okay," he answered. His voice still sounded scratchy; unused. Something in it had changed, had made it less the voice of a devoted family man and more a low growl.
Like the growl of the things. Of them.
"What happened to you?" asked Christopher. Wondering if he should wait until the others could hear this, too. He looked at Theresa. She nodded, encouraging him to keep going. "We thought you died."
Ken looked at his hands. Curled them into fists, and examined the too-large bones of his knuckles, his forearms. "I think.... I think I did."
103
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, you died?" Christopher stared at his friend –
(is it your friend?)
– and tried to understand. Tried to make sense of madness.
Failed.
"You're talking crazy," said Theresa.
"No," said Ken. "Not crazy. It just is."
"Not sure how you can think that, bud." Christopher grinned, a smile wider than he felt like giving. "You're here, Ken. Still with us."
Ken looked at Christopher, then at Theresa. "Your friend did this to me," he said.
Christopher knew what he was talking about: Theresa's companion, Elijah, had been the one who shot Ken in the chest. And then Ken bled out and – they thought – died.
"Yes," said Theresa. There was no fear in her voice, nor any trace of apology. Partly because she hadn't pulled the trigger and partly because, Christopher knew, she was still convinced it had been the right call at the time.
"No use getting mad," said Christopher. Worried what Ken might do if he got it in his head that Theresa was still a threat. "And she's changed her mind about us. About you. And you're here. You're safe."
"Safe?" Ken chuckled. "No one is safe." He looked back at his hands. "You said I was alive. But first I had to die. And now...."
"You're here," said Christopher. "You're with us."
"I am with you, yes. But not Ken." He looked up. "Ken died, and I lived. But Ken... Ken is still dead, I think."
Christopher realized something. Something that had hung in the peripheries of his mind for some time now, but that had finally pushed its way to the fore.
Ken had been, above all, kind. Tough, yes, but he hadn't become their leader because of that – they were all tough.
(All but me.)
No, the thing that had made them their leader was that he cared about them all. That he always said the right thing.
But now... now he said next to nothing.
And in that moment, he knew that Ken was right. Maybe not in the particulars, but something about Ken was gone. Maybe the most important things.
"How can you be dead?" said Theresa.
"I felt...." Ken put a bony hand to the bare chest that looked subtly wrong – too thick in the center, too rounded. "I felt the bullets go in. I felt myself leave." He fell silent.
"Then what?" asked Christopher. His voice was so low he barely heard it above the rattle-hum of the truck.
"Then... nothing." Ken's eyes were faraway. "Then everything. I felt the earth, the insects, the grass and weeds. I felt it, was it."
"So you didn't die," said Christopher. "Just blacked out from blood loss, then –"
"What?" Ken said. "People do not black out from blood loss and then just improve."
"You did. You did."
"No. I did not. I am back, but I am not Ken. I wear him, like a coat. A hand in a glove."
Christopher shook his head. "That's impossible."
"Nothing impossible is impossible. Not anymore." Ken looked into the sky. "The world burns. New things rise from ash."
"If you're not Ken," said Theresa, "then what are you?"
"I am different. Less. More. I think that the zombies come from the dead, but all the
y are is shells. I came back and my shell was corrupt. My mind only took in part of what was offered. What was forced." He held out a hand. Bone became blade. "I am me. I am them. So because I am both, I am almost none." He turned his hand, looking at what it had become. "I hear them." He looked at Christopher. "They call me. And I think... I think that sooner or later I will answer. Sooner or later I will join them."
104
THEY DROVE SILENTLY. The sky lightened further. The smoke fell away in individual threads, strands pulled from a blanket one after another until it was no longer threadbare but simply gone.
The truck swerved from time to time, moving around cars that had stopped on the sides of the highway – sometimes right in the middle.
Christopher looked at each as they passed. Some had bloodstains on the seats, the steering wheels, the windshields.
All were empty.
He sat down. The metal of the truck bed was cold. It bled through the ripped and stained remains of his clothing. He shivered.
Theresa sat beside him. Not touching, but close enough to be in easy reach. He didn't think that was accidental, given that she had the entire truck bed to choose from. He wanted to hold her hand again. Not because of the interest bordering on infatuation that he had felt from the first time he saw her –
(just like I felt for Heather)
– but simply because a touch would have reminded him there were others with him. It would have reminded him of what he was fighting for. Not just to hold on, not just to endure. To live.
But he didn't touch her. Every time he felt ready to, he saw Ken, hunched in the back of the truck in a pool of shadow that seemed to emanate from him.
Ken looked at nothing. He crouched – not sat, crouched, looking ever at the ready – in the back of the truck, staring into space. Every once in a while his body would shift, would ripple. Not with the motion of the truck, but in subtle waves like something below the skin was trying to get out.
The truck slowed. Christopher felt it before he recognized it consciously. As soon as he did, the truck gave a shudder and there was a squeal of heavy duty brakes. He kept moving, that last few inches that everyone experiences when driving in a car that has suddenly stopped. Forward motion even when the world has stopped around them.
Christopher stood. "What's going...?"
His voice drifted away as he saw why Aaron had stopped the car.
It wasn't one or two cars here. It was a dozen, crumpled into one another, spanning the entirety of the highway. The one on the far right was tilted, leaning into a deep ditch that led down to railroad tracks below.
"Can we get around?" asked Theresa.
"I don't know," he said.
The driver side door of the truck squealed on aged hinges. Christopher shifted to the side and saw Aaron climbing down.
"Aaron, you think it's a good idea to get out?"
"No," said the cowboy. "But I got to see if we can make it through."
"Just slam through. We're in a big truck."
"Not big enough. Too many cars."
"Go around."
Aaron looked up at him. Squinted. "What do you think I'm trying to figure out how to do?"
Christopher was up and over the side of the truck bed before he had time to think about what he was doing.
Thinking was a luxury. There was only what had to be done.
He landed with a subtle crunch on the asphalt, hands going down to steady him from the high jump. Aaron was still squinting, looking at him like he wasn't sure what to do with a sudden intruder. "You think it's a good idea to get out?"
Another crunch as Theresa landed. Softer than he had – she had actually bothered to crawl most of the way down the side of the truck bed before dropping to the pavement. She straightened. "Why aren't we just going around?"
Aaron nodded at the car in the ditch. "Can't go there. Too steep, and we'll get hung up on the rails." He pointed at the other side, where there was another depression. "I wanna see what's over there."
"Okay." Theresa stepped toward that side of the road.
"It don't take three people to look at a roadside."
"No," she answered. Still walking. "But it might take three to beat off anything we find there."
And then, as if whatever celestial entity who was in charge of the world they now lived in – didn't seem likely to Christopher that it was God, if He'd ever existed – they heard something.
Aaron and Christopher were already standing still. Now they went rigid.
The sound came again. Smaller than usual, but still familiar. Still recognizable, and still enough to curdle Christopher's guts.
The growl.
105
THEY ALL TURNED – SLOWLY – in the direction of the sound. For a long time no one moved. Christopher sensed motion beside them, and almost screamed before he realized it was Amulek climbing out of the truck. He landed in an absolute silence that somehow made the low growling seem louder, stronger, more terrifying.
Ken did not appear over the top of the dump truck. Christopher didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad one.
Amulek raised his hand. Pointed.
The cars were three deep in the area he pointed. And in the middle one, there was movement. Slow. Jerky.
A zombie.
At first Christopher wondered why it was still there. There hadn't been any other people – alive, dead, or Changed – in any of the other cars.
Then he saw the other two cars had slammed into the middle car sideways. Like all three had skidded to a ninety-degree-angle on the highway, then locked together in a death embrace.
The creature was trapped in the car.
It opened its mouth. The growl came out. But Christopher realized he was hearing the growl for the first time. Not the sound of fingers scraping across the inside of his skull, not that invitation to –
(give up, give in)
– lay down and die.
It was just... sound. The noise of a dog dying slowly. Not in pain, just fading.
It didn't seem to notice them.
Just like the dude in the bathroom.
The thing's hands were on the steering wheel. Christopher wondered if they had been like that since the Change. If it had frozen in undeath, had stayed like that because there was no reason to move.
But there was reason now. They were the zombies' prey, and Christopher didn't think the creatures cared much about whether the odds were in their favor in a fight. They just attacked, and attacked, and attacked until their prey was dead or Changed.
This one simply sat. Eyes wide, staring at the car's ceiling. Mouth open, a gaping maw that Christopher could see right into. Three of its teeth were shattered, nubs that he focused on for some reason and that seemed incredibly important in the timeless forever between spotting the zombie and drawing his first, panicked breath.
Don't scream. Don't scream. Don't scream.
Why isn't it attacking?
Why didn't the other one attack?
The creature's mouth was agape, air rasping in and out of its body in long, measured gasps that Christopher could hear through the cracks in the side window.
Another thing that made no sense: the things went on forever, no matter how badly they were hurt. So why did they respire? What could that possibly do for them, unless it was simply some strange motor memory – a last gasp, literally, of the life the Changed had once enjoyed?
Not important right now. Stay on track.
His first impulse was to throw himself back to the ground, roll, and come up running. But....
But there was no confrontation. The thing just kept sitting there. Staring at nothing. Dead to the world.
Aaron thought for a moment. Then turned back to the side of the road. Back to what he had been walking toward before the sound came. "Come on," he said.
"You know what's going on?" asked Christopher.
Aaron looked grim. "I have an idea."
106
THEY LOOKED AT THE side of the
road. It was steep there, but Aaron said he thought the truck would make it down fine. Christopher didn't question the assessment.
They went back to the truck. Maggie leaned out of the cab and asked, "Are we going to get through? Can we still get to Micron?" and looked at her children. Lizzy was asleep – or whatever it was that wrapped silence around her and shut her eyes – on her lap. Hope had been laid across the bench seat, her head in her mother's lap.
Aaron didn't answer the question. Instead, he said, "Here's what I think: this is an outer defense." Everyone looked at him. "I been in some pretty nasty places. No hiding that, and I guess any Top Secret classifications are probably moot at this point." He glanced at the pile of cars. "Let's say you have a base," he said. "You're trying to build a military installation in a place where you're worried about possible attacks."
"Like the ones in Afghanistan?" said Theresa.
"That's a pretty good analogy," said Aaron. "Say you've cleaned out an area, a green zone, but you're still worried about attacks – suicide bombers, or straight-up military strikes. So what do you do?"
"You build a wall," said Theresa.
Aaron nodded.
"But this isn't a defensive wall," said Christopher. "This is just some cars that crashed along with the rest of the world."
"I know. But the way it works is this: you build serious defenses close to your base. Walls, mines, guards with firepower. Farther out, though," he spread his hands apart, "you can't do all that. But still, you don't want your first notice of an attack to be the attack itself. So what do you do?"
"Spotters," said Theresa.
"Right. People scoping out the area surrounding your base. And farther than that? Maybe you bribe locals. Maybe you just put up security cameras." Aaron looked at Christopher. "And then there's the other thing."
Christopher tilted his head. "What?"
"Any of you notice how these things move?" asked Aaron.
"Fast," said Theresa. "Vicious."
Maggie spoke, a quiet voice from the cab. She usually spoke quietly, Christopher noted. But whenever she spoke, the others listened. Her soft voice commanded more respect than most men's shouts and screams. "They don't do well alone," she said.
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 91