Aaron nodded. "So you noticed too." He looked around the group. Then focused on Christopher. "You remember the things, the way they were when they climbed up the Wells Fargo Center? Coming for all of us?"
"I think we already established 'fast' and 'vicious.' I would also add, 'really really scary.'"
"Right," said Aaron with a tight grin. "But how did they move together?"
Theresa blinked, understanding suddenly shining in her eyes. "They move like one person. Like a single big body." She focused on Aaron. "They don't bump into each other. They don't fall over each other. None of them ever gets in the way of the other."
Christopher thought of the hordes he had seen. Some only a few hundred, others over a hundred thousand. And thinking back, the only time he could remember the things bumping or jostling unnecessarily at one another was when one of them was injured in the head.
"Now that's weird," he said.
"Yeah. They attack as a perfect unit. The most perfectly coordinated soldiers who ever existed," said Aaron.
"But that's not true," said Theresa. "What about those two in Crow City? The ones just lying in the middle of the road? They didn't look very coordinated with the others."
"No, they didn't. Until the others bungled along and joined them. And then –"
"Then they all ran perfectly." Theresa shook her head. "What does it mean? What does it have to do with this?" She gestured at the cars.
"The one we found didn't move fast," said Christopher. He quickly recounted what they had seen in the mine office.
"Makes sense," said Aaron.
"You have a different version of 'sense' than I do, cowboy," said Christopher.
"No, it does. I think...." Aaron's lips pursed as though he were trying to figure out the best way to say what he was thinking. "I think this is some kind of distributed intelligence."
"What's that?" asked Theresa.
"You know what an octopus does when you cut off its arm?" said Aaron.
Christopher shrugged, "Throws out one of its roller skates?"
Theresa glared at him, but Aaron took the answer in stride. "It pretty much keeps on doing what it was doing. You know what happens to the arm?"
"What?" said Theresa.
"It pretty much keeps on doing what it was doing. It'll grab stuff, even pull bits of food toward the octopus's mouth – even though the mouth isn't there anymore."
"That's creepy," said Christopher.
"How can it do that?" asked Theresa, and Amulek nodded as though adding his seal of approval to the question.
"It does that because its brain isn't in its head. Or at least, not just in its head. It has millions of neurons, and they're gathered in a series of nodes – sort of mini-brains throughout the thing's body and arms. There's a big node in the head that controls vision and respiration and whatnot, but it ain't the only part of its intelligence."
"So when you cut off the arm, the brains in that arm are still functioning," said Christopher.
"Then why do they try to bring food to a mouth that's not there?" asked Maggie. "Don't the... the arm brains sense the rest of the body is gone?"
"Ah," said Aaron with a satisfied look. "That's the question. And the answer is that the brains all work together to form a very intelligent whole. But when you cut off a part of the octopus's body, you're literally making both the body and the remaining limb a bit stupider. Cut into small enough pieces, the bits won't function anymore – they just aren't smart enough to get along on their own."
"And that means...?" said Theresa.
"I've been operating under the assumption that this was an attacking army," said Aaron. "I think I might have been wrong about that. This ain't no attacking army. It's just a few beings, whose intelligence is distributed among the millions – billions – of people who have been Changed."
He looked at Hope. Lizzy. "I think we've got two of the primary nodes right here."
107
"WE ALREADY KNEW THEY were important," said Theresa. Christopher heard unvoiced: So should we kill them now? Maybe it was his imagination and Theresa meant no such thing, but he sensed Maggie tense at the statement. "What does that mean about Silent Bob over there?" she said.
"It means that when they're separated from each other, the nodes don't function properly. Put them in a group, they're smart. By themselves... it's like they're toenail clippings. No good at all."
"Toenail clippings don't come try to murder you when another toenail clipping comes along," said Theresa.
"That's true," said Aaron. "The ones we saw last night seem to show that if individuals bumble into one another, they can be reactivated. Can rejoin the group. But the fact is the more isolated they are the less useful they are. That's why the ones in Crow City could muster up the gumption to follow us – there were enough of them to create the intelligence necessary to connect to whatever beam it is that tells them to kill everyone they come across. But as a solitary creature...." He shook his head. "They're nothing to worry about."
"Except for the fact that the ones we've seen are almost always in groups," said Theresa, "so –"
"So they're going to be very smart, and possibly getting smarter as the queens or the king or whoever's running things finishes growing and establishes final control over them. Then there won't be any hope for us at all. Faster than us, stronger than us. Smarter than us. The human race will end."
"So the one in the car got stuck in a place where he would be all alone, and that put him to sleep," said Christopher. "Until some of its buddies come along."
"Yeah, but I wonder if he's acting like a broadcast station. Separated from the rest, too stupid to do anything but lay there. But he's maybe picking things up, maybe sending information like a dumb security camera. First line of defense. Passive information being conveyed."
"So we should get moving," said Theresa. "Why are we sitting here if you think it's broadcasting?"
"Because I don't know for sure. I'm just conjecturing about that last, and I didn't see any point in rushing in. Besides, what if us trying to get through the cars – actually past them, as opposed to just taking a look at them – is what will trigger the thing?"
"Damned if you do, damned if you don't," said Maggie.
"Yup," said Aaron. "I figured we probably have a little time, and that's good. Because we need to make a decision."
"What's that?"
"Let's assume that they get dumber the farther from others they are," said Aaron.
"Seems to make sense," said Theresa.
"I'm sold," said Christopher. He flashed a smile. She scratched her nose and pointed. He felt his own nose and realized he had a huge clot of blood sticking to his right nostril.
Nice. Very sexy.
He kept grinning at her as he pulled it off. It made his eyes water. He held it out to her. "I picked it just for you."
"Oh, my God, are you always –"
Maggie's voice cut Theresa short. "What you say makes sense," she said to Aaron. "They stick together. But I've never seen one of them left behind, either."
"Right," said Aaron. "Which is why we gotta make a decision. They don't leave their friends alone – they always travel together. But this one's out here alone. Separated? No, he was left there. So I definitely think that he's some kind of broadcaster. Just like when the one you two," he said, indicating Christopher and Theresa, "bumped into started making noise, the others came that much faster. So," he said, and looked at each person in turn, holding their gazes with his own before moving on. "How bad do we want to get to this anechoic chamber? Because this is the only way through for a long way around, and my guess is that when we try to go through the wall, all hell is going to break loose."
108
THEY GOT IN THE TRUCK. Amulek looked at Christopher and Theresa, and gestured at the cab.
"I'm good in back," said Christopher.
"Me, too."
Amulek shrugged and tilted his head: Suit yourself. Then he climbed back into the truck. He took
Hope and held her in his arms, her head lolling over his shoulder.
Aaron climbed back in as well, while Christopher and Theresa clambered into the back of the truck.
The truck shifted into gear. Began reversing.
Christopher looked at Ken. He was still hunched in the back of the truck bed. "You hear what Aaron said?" he asked.
Ken nodded. "He was right."
"About the way these things think?"
Ken nodded.
"What about after we get past these cars?" asked Theresa. "Is everything going to fall to pieces around us?"
The truck shifted gears again and began moving forward. Aaron cranked it to the left, toward the depression on that side of the road.
Ken finally drew his gaze away from the empty air. He stared at Theresa. "Is everything going to fall to pieces?" He smiled a thin, rictus-like smile. "It already has."
The truck tilted suddenly. Christopher and Theresa both reached out to hold the side of the truck bed so as to keep from falling. Ken just shifted his balance and remained perfectly in place.
The truck evened out. Went forward for a few seconds, then tilted back up.
Christopher's body ached. Not just with the pains and injuries of the past days. His muscles were so rigid they trembled. He didn't know what would happen after they passed the cars, but he knew he was terrified.
He looked at Theresa. At Ken. Neither of them looked back at him. Theresa looked as scared as he felt. Ken just looked... like he had since he came back.
They bounced over the lip of the asphalt. Back onto the road.
Nothing happened.
Christopher almost relaxed. Then he stood up. Looked over the back lip of the truck.
The zombie was still in the car. But it had moved. Turned its head.
It was looking at them.
109
DRIVING.
Silence, other than the hum of big tires, the pound of a motor designed for hard work and conscripted for flight.
The sun crept higher on the horizon, now completely visible though the tang of smoke still touched Christopher's mouth and nose.
He wondered how much longer they could go before running out of gas.
The truck swerved more and more as they continued on, occasionally slowing to a crawl as it nudged cars out of the way. But there were no more instances of cars spanning the road, of roadblocks all but impassable.
"What were you?" Theresa said suddenly. "Before."
The words took Christopher by surprise. For a while – he didn't know how long – he had been hypnotized. Nearly lulled to sleep by the thrum of the engine, the crackle-hum of the tires.
Been up for too long. Running for too long.
Theresa was looking at him with something approaching concern. Probably worried he was going to break into some freaked out coo-coo dance right there in the truck bed.
He shrugged. "I was a screw-up, mostly. Kicked out of enough schools it started to cost my dad serious money to find new ones that would accept me. Which I guess was worth it for him since it kept bad-ol' me out of his hair. You were a cop, right?"
She shook her head. "I was a checker at Fred Meyer."
Christopher laughed. "What about...?" He gestured at her body armor.
"My brother. He's the cop. Was the cop." She went silent again. Christopher was content to let that silence reign. Not because he didn't have anything to say about her loss – a world of things occurred – but because the silence just seemed right in this moment. Unusual for him – he typically talked as much as possible. Covering quiet times with a restless prattle that in his more introspective moments he admitted was the side effect of a fear of being alone.
So much time alone. More or less abandoned by his parents, then finding Heather. Then she left, too.
And the baby.
So much time alone.
And now... not alone. Not alone for the end of the world, and that was a comfort.
"He got us out in time," she said. "Got us to the police station, got us outfitted – me and Elijah."
"He work at Fred Meyer, too?"
"No. He was a friend of mine and my brother's. He was a firearms instructor."
Christopher thought of the big black man who had hunted them – had shot Ken. "I can believe that." He looked at her. "Sorry about what happened to them."
Silence again. And again, surprisingly comfortable.
Theresa opened her mouth to speak. Then whatever she was going to say died in her throat. Christopher saw it happen, even as he saw her raise a hand. Point.
Christopher followed the direction of her gesture. Saw what she was pointing at.
Ken.
Ken was still crouching, but something about his stance had changed. He was no longer at rest, and his head tilted up to the sky. Not like the zombies, not "downloading" whatever had turned them into whatever they were, but like a man questing to hear, to see, to smell.
As Christopher watched, the bony growths sprung from Ken's hands. A thin, sharp ridge of bone erupted from his forearms and made him into a creature of razor edges, of daggers that were part of flesh.
No other movement, but a chill swept through Christopher's body.
Ken turned. Stood. "Stop!" he shouted. "Stop the –"
And everything fell away. Everything disappeared.
Everything went black.
110
"CHRISTOPHER."
Still dark. Still black.
"Christopher, get up! Wake up!"
He was in Heather's arms. Asleep on her legs, both of them under a tree at Quarry View Park after visiting the Old Penitentiary. Green grass around. Sky –
Why's the sky so dark?
Then a light roved its way across the sky. A light brighter than the moon, but not enough to allay the darkness that spanned the space above.
"Christopher. Come on, kid."
The second voice wasn't Heather's.
But the first voice wasn't Heather's, either. Who was it? Who's talking now?
The light stopped flitting across the sky and settled on his face. He could see it even through closed eyes.
Closed? How am I here?
The park faded. The light brightened. He blinked.
"He's coming to." That was the second voice again. The deeper one, the one that belonged to –
"Aaron?" Christopher held a hand over his face to shield it from the light. The hand felt heavy, pulled down by bones that suddenly weighed more than lead bars.
Too heavy. His hand fell back across his eyes. He tried to lift it, but his body wasn't listening to him.
"Christopher. Chris, wake up. Get up." The first voice. Raspy, but still recognizable as the voice of a woman.
Not Heather, though. Heather's –
(dead)
– not here.
He blinked again. And this time the fog dissipated a bit. The light was still burning its way into his skull. It hurt.
"The hell's going on?" he mumbled. His voice didn't sound like his own.
"Good question." Aaron.
That was Aaron. And the other voice was Theresa.
With the memory of the names, a bit of strength came back into his body. He sat up. Aware now that he had been laying partly on Theresa's lap, partly on the cold metal of the dump truck's bed.
Laying on something else, too. Something gritty that bit into his legs and back until he sat up. His hands pushed against the metal, and the grit was under them, too.
Dirt. Thick, dark dirt. And larger particles. Rough like stone, but too angular, too sharp to be naturally occurring.
Asphalt?
What happened?
The light finally swung off his face. "I think he's okay," said Aaron.
"Thank goodness," said Maggie. Christopher couldn't see her. Couldn't see much at all.
Just dark, sheared by the lance of brightness that he finally realized was a small but powerful flashlight in Aaron's good hand.
The cowboy pointed it at another person
. Amulek. Then Ken. "You two all right?" he asked. The others nodded.
They were in the truck bed with him, he realized. They all were. Even Maggie, holding Lizzy. Amulek had Hope over his shoulder.
Christopher looked around. "Where are we?" he asked. "What happened?"
"Road collapsed," said Aaron.
"Collapsed? What do you mean?"
Aaron shined the light upward. Christopher followed it.
Saw.
And feared.
111
THE ROAD had collapsed, but there was more to it than that.
Christopher hadn't really understood what Aaron said at first: "Road collapse"? How was that possible? They hadn't been traveling a freeway overpass, hadn't gone over a tunnel. It had been solid road, resting on what Christopher assumed was solid rock beneath.
But the road had collapsed. And underneath... a cavern.
That was the only word for it. Looking up, Christopher pieced together what must have happened. The road crumbled because it was just a shell. A brittle skin covering a huge void. Something had hollowed out the stone and soil for fifty feet below the ground. When the truck passed over what was left of the road, the asphalt had cracked, fallen away.
The truck must have tumbled forward, crashed into the far edge of the cavern, tumbled back, hit the rear of it. Fallen. A zig-zag descent that had saved all their lives.
"What did this?" Theresa was looking up. She was focused on something, and when Christopher followed her gaze he saw a collection of pipes, spewing water in a thin rain that fell beside the truck. The flashlight swung across them from time to time as Aaron looked at their surroundings, and when the light struck them they turned to thin jewels in the darkness.
"A sinkhole or something?" asked Maggie.
Amulek shook his head. He was looking up, too, but not at the water. He pointed.
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 92