Through The Valley

by Yates, B. D.

  He was already growing tired by the time he had fought his way to the door, and as he expected, it was clogged with rasping, clambering corpses. Emmit paused just long enough to deliver several powerful kicks to their knees and ankles, snapping at least one kneecap with a pop-crunch that sounded so painful that he could almost feel it himself.

  "Fuckers!" He bellowed hoarsely, wriggling between the swarming dead. He felt fingernails clawing through his damp hair and scratching down the back of his neck, yanking the many collars of his clothing taught against his throat. And then he was abruptly free of the mob— if “free” was the right word for it.

  The woods outside the cabin had come to boisterous life, shadowy movements bustling between the tree trunks everywhere he tried to look. He was sprinting through a swarm of oversized locusts; so many voices of so many variations and volumes were blending until he couldn't even distinguish their words at all. It was a maddening, ear-splitting buzz that never ceased. Looking at the infestation felt like looking at a bad car accident while you were stuck in traffic on a busy highway. He knew it was not something he wanted to see, and yet he was fighting the urge to stop escaping and just watch, observe their incremental but steady domination.

  There is an entire fucking army out here.

  The spear-torch was flickering, losing life fast. He saw no bright lights anywhere except for the one he had created. Where was there to run? What was there to do? He couldn't kill them all, but any one or two of them could kill him.

  It scared the Christ out of me, and I do not scare easily.

  Roy's gruff voice came to him from nowhere, as if his spirit were out there somewhere among the dead things. Emmit felt a dagger of disappointment slam home in his chest; disappointment that he wouldn't be able to bring justice to Roy like he had to Poke. Roy would survive; he had made it astronomically more difficult for him, but Roy would live to move on and establish his new camp, hang new signs to lure in other lost souls caught in the web of the time warp, and ultimately murder them for their meat. But then the gears of his mind began to turn, well-oiled now, faster and faster until they spun like saw blades.

  He wanted to move the camp because he was afraid of being overrun. I remember that.

  A Link was closing the gap between them, and Emmit put on a fresh burst of speed even as he was plotting. There was a surge of excitement through the masses, spreading out and away from him like ripples in a shallow pond. His rapid movements and glowing torch were making him popular.

  Roy said that if a pack of Links this size hit the camp, it would flatten it like a bulldozer.

  Emmit mentally kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. If he was going to die, he was taking Roy with him. And he now had an army who would follow him without question or backtalk.

  His sense of self-preservation was kicking and screaming, accelerating his pulse to the point that he thought he might croak of a heart attack before he could even get his revenge. Emmit ignored it, willing his lungs and vocal cords to work together.

  "Hey assholes!" He bellowed, cupping his empty hand around his mouth. The words didn't echo as much as he had expected them to. There were too many dense bodies around that absorbed the sound, really driving home just how crowded the surrounding area was. There was another surge of excitement through the masses, their voices rising together with a murmur that sounded like sheets of incoming rain. Through the dense fog of his vision, he could see more obscure figures sluggishly turning to move in his direction. He was like a magnet, drawing metal shavings toward him in an ever-shrinking circle.

  Emmit lowered the flickering spear toward the ground, looking for the path he and the Rev had made. The snow was trampled and littered with scraps of clothing and drops of dark fluid he didn't care to identify, but the trench they had left was still easy to spot if he truly concentrated. He began running along it at a blistering pace, adrenaline numbing all his aches and pains and his stifling clothing protecting him from most of the biting cold.

  "God damn right I'm a bank robber!" He continued, bouncing from trees and low-hanging branches like a pinball and clumsily righting himself again. "I'm John fucking Dillinger! I needed money so I took it! Now come and get me you ugly bastards!"

  He ran until his breaths were wheezing in and out of him, narrowly dodging most of the thick tree trunks but plowing into several with his arm curled in front of him like a bumper. His elbow was growing sore, the thin flesh irritated and raw. He pictured them behind him, flowing through the woods like a river of rotten meat, forming a giant V as they all congregated on his tail. It was suicide; he knew it was. But suicide was starting to feel like the only escape from the horror.

  Once he was able to smell the smoke from Roy's cabin, he was brutally reminded that his mental image of the monsters on his tail, only on his tail, was dead wrong. Links weren't just lumbering along behind him; he had to dodge them as well, holding the spear horizontally and using it to bat them out of the way with fleshy thuds. The flaming tip had gone out, but Emmit hadn't had time to notice until he swung the spear into the hairless cranium of a corpse in a police uniform. The brittle, ashy wood wrapped around the thing’s knobby skull, halving the length of his only defense. The cop had been chuckling wetly as Emmit pelted past it, knocked down to one grubby knee and oozing dark ichor from the fresh gash in its head.

  The trees were thinning out ahead of him, and although he had strayed from the path in his panicked flight, he knew he had reached the clearing where Roy had settled. Roy was probably still inside, huddled up warm by the fire and snoring, his big belly full and his mind at ease. Little did he know, he was about to receive a few hundred thousand more painful black handprints to match the one on his face.

  "Here!" Emmit cried again, out of breath, lungs aflame and aching for oxygen. "All of you, over here! Bunch of bad guys for you, right in this cabin!" He made a beeline right for the front door, or at least his best guess as to where it was. He could see the glowing cracks and openings again, and he hoped with a deep and broiling ferocity that the firelight would serve as a beacon to the Links, something glittering and pretty to guide them in like fish drawn to a reflective bobber.

  Emmit cut left just before he slammed into the side of the cabin, extending his hand and dragging his fingers along the rough bark of the logs. When his hand touched cold open air again, he swerved back right. He could hear the Megahorde churning behind him, close behind him, and he smiled with his open, panting mouth.

  The humming susurrus of stiff vocal cords was suddenly drowned out by hammering blows like distant and muffled gun shots; bare flesh and fists pounding on the walls of the cabin. The monotonous buzz of the corpses trying to speak droned on and on, swelling as their excitement grew until it was a deafening roar. They were now so numerous that their collective sound was like the roaring crowd at an NFL game, or maybe the fanatical fans at one of the big wrestling tours he had taken Deacon to (back when he had the spare cash). The ones where he and his boy had always tried desperately to get on TV, holding the signs they had made together high over their heads, jumping and screaming like raving lunatics.

  Emmit admonished himself. He didn't have time to think about Deek. He didn't have time to acknowledge the fresh heartache trying to settle in behind his rib cage like a new, voracious cancer. Not all of the Links were focused on Roy's cabin— there were still too many to count that had simply ignored it in favor of him.

  This is it. This is the end game. My enemies slain, I ride off into the night on my trusty steed and... well, freeze or starve to death, I suppose.

  Food would an immediate problem if he managed to escape them (not that he would have eaten any of the available food anyway) but still more pressing was sheer exhaustion. Emmit didn't think he could run much longer; he had already slowed considerably, and though the creatures were slower than he was, they wouldn't tire out or give up. All they had to do was stay on his ass until he physically could not move anymore, and then they could turn him at their leisur
e.

  Well, they're going to earn it, he thought determinedly, lowering his head and pressing on through the silent trees. Panic was nipping at his heels, but somehow, he kept it in its cage. Somehow, he was beginning to accept his poignant fate. The only thing he couldn't seem to accept was that he wouldn't get to say goodbye to his son, wouldn't get to give him one last hug or one last word of wisdom to guide him through his many coming years of life, wouldn't get to hear him giggle at another dumb Dad joke. And he also wouldn't get to make his peace with Kelly, wouldn't get to apologize for their fights and his anger and intermittent drinking binges, wouldn't get to tell her that after all of it, he still loved her just as much as he had at the end of their very first date.

  There was a sudden sharp pain in his chest. Emmit cried out and brought a hand up to feel for whatever had stabbed him, but he found nothing but unmarred fabric. The pain was unbearable, as if someone had run him through a white-hot steel rod and left him skewered like a rabbit carcass on a spit.

  Heart attack. Heart attack. Heart attack.

  The intense pain near his heart was coupled with massive waves of pressure, like a pair of invisible hands shoving into his abdomen repeatedly, hard enough to push the wind out of him. It made it difficult to keep moving forward, especially when the rhythmic pumps felt like they might break his ribs, but the snarling and laughing and grating voices of the dead behind him kept his rubbery legs scissoring. The pressure on his chest stopped, just long enough for Emmit to wonder what the hell it had been, and then it was back with a vengeance. It felt like someone was driving punches into his midsection with huge, padded boxing gloves. The agony near his heart screamed out at him, demanding all his attention, and he began to feel faint.

  Every joint in his body felt like a dental drill burrowing into a rotten tooth, every muscle filled with liquid fire and ready to tear themselves from his bones. His toes, imprisoned in the soaked and icy coffins that were his shoes, were so frozen that it felt like he was running on stilts. And the pain in his heart, god damn that pain in his heart. If he'd had the oxygen to spare, he would have screamed himself hoarse.

  He was beginning to lose consciousness now, and he knew with a blunt and callous finality that his end was near. Right on cue, he saw a brilliant white pinpoint of light twinkling in the void ahead of him like a sympathetic eye, hovering before him like a miniature sun.

  That's the tunnel... the tunnel everyone says you see when you die... not enough... oxygen...

  Beams of painfully bright light were unfurling from the mouth of the tunnel like radiant flower petals, radiating out from the center and dancing around it like slow fire whirls. It took on the appearance of a dazzling sunflower, the packed snow beneath it slowly levitating in little puffs and clouds and forming a light mist that collected beneath it like seawater.

  The pressure slamming into his abdomen was ceaseless. The pain in his chest made him hate the fact that he was still breathing.

  Is it possible? Could it be—

  His body could endure no more. His legs crumbled like ancient pillars beneath him and he collapsed into the snow, writhing and gasping, his body jerking as the invisible hands continued to slam into his solar plexus.

  Emmit knew he wasn't moving, but the bright white orb of fire was; it sought him out, approaching like the headlamp of a locomotive barreling down a long passageway and heading straight for him. He put up his hands to try to block the glare as he was enveloped in it, and was struck dumb by what he saw as he moved to cover his face.

  The black stains on his palms were crumbling. They flaked and peeled off like aged paint, leaving his pale white skin clean and unscarred. As the glow around him grew brighter still, he could see the tiny pieces defying gravity around him, disintegrating into a fine dust.

  Wait a minute— I can see.

  Even as the sensation of molten steel being poured into his chest intensified, Emmit was astounded by just how well he could suddenly see without his lost glasses. He could see every particle of dust and ice and snow suspended in the beams of light around him, spiraling up and off into the black sky above like galaxies being born.

  Emmit's agonized heart stopped in his chest as he realized that he'd allowed the dead to catch up with him.

  Shit shit shit I stopped moving I stopped—

  He pivoted to look over his shoulder, grimacing at the tug of his tortured chest muscles, just as the dead body of a soldier was staggering up to greet him. The light washed over it like a searchlight, illuminating its grimed fatigues and the wrinkled leather of its face with a bluish luster. The soldier's milky white eyes were wide and eager, but it only wore a half-smile. The left side of its mouth was frozen shut, the bruise-colored flesh of its lips stretching and distorting but held fast by a crystalline mass of dark fluid. The dead soldier paused and cocked its head to one side, staring at Emmit like a curious child, then resumed shambling forward. Humanoid shadows stood out in the darkness behind it like tombstones, and then they were on all sides of him.

  The dead soldier moaned the word "thief" and extended its convulsing hand, bone white fingers tipped with black nails extending out from fingerless leather gloves. Emmit knew there was nowhere to run and looked defiantly into the creature's blank eyes. He waited for the pain; what was a little more after what he was already feeling?

  The corpse's arm broke the barrier of the tunnel Emmit knelt in, and then Emmit saw something he’d never expected to see. The zombie's face changed, and it was no longer grinning. Its peeling brow drew down into a stare of frustration and animosity, the half-smile curving down into a stroke frown and making it look like a rotting pumpkin. It stared at its own arm, grinding its teeth together so hard that Emmit could hear them crunching and snapping out of their sockets. Then the thing screamed, a throaty and bubbling roar that tore through the teeming masses around it and made all the slouching figures stumble cautiously back away from it.

  It had only taken a few seconds. The light had formed a protective barrier around Emmit like a force field, and the dead soldier's arm was disintegrating before his eyes. The flesh of its hand began to flake off like the stains on Emmit's palm had, the outer epidermis going first and then great chunks of the dried sinew beneath it. They fell off the bones like overcooked ribs. The soldier's forearm detached neatly at the elbow, turning lazily end over end as it floated up above Emmit's head. It fractured into little more than black ash and debris until there was nothing left but a maelstrom of dark particles.

  Emmit was in too much pain to feel any joy from it; his only thought was that he would at least perish on his own, safe in his circle of light and not buried under a mound of decayed living corpses. He had found the Rev's mythical light, or rather, it had found him— but now he would die bathed in it. That wasn't quite the escape he'd had in mind.

  Emmit closed his eyes and waited for some sensation to come, something to let him know that death had arrived.

  The invisible hands began to slam into his midsection again, racking his body with seizures and agitating the already bruised muscles. He began to feel drowsy and dizzy, paired with the sensation that he was somehow flying through space while prone. It was the same feeling he got from drinking way too much on an empty stomach, his mattress flipping like a coin as he clung to it.

  "Stop," he moaned, to whomever or whatever might be jackhammering his sternum. He tried to crawl away, reaching weakly for a handful of snow to help him along. Instead of snow, he grabbed open air. He wasn't even on the ground anymore; he was hovering above it.

  Emmit opened his eyes and looked up, and saw the ground far below him. He was drifting into the sky upside down, pulled by some strong and undeniable force through a transparent cylinder of rotating light beams. He shifted his weight and began to spin in midair like an astronaut in zero gravity, righting himself so he could look down at the winter woods falling away beneath him. It was like looking at a miniature landscape, an extremely detailed one, perhaps built for a model train set or a museum
diorama.

  The Megahorde was still crowded around the perfect circle of light beneath him, swarming and shoving each other like a slow-motion riot. The unaware corpses in back were desperate to make it to the front, and the terrified Links in front were hurriedly stumbling to the back. Their wounded and filthy limbs tangled and scratched and shoved, and those of them that noticed the shape of their prey above them, rising into the sky like a phoenix, grasped and clutched stupidly at the open air.

  A bright orange flicker caught Emmit's eye. He spun himself, still rising ever higher, and found himself staring down at the ruin of Roy's meat locker. It was fully engulfed in flame, bathing the creatures circling it in warm firelight that made them look like ants scurrying slowly around a destroyed anthill.

  Good, Emmit thought. Tim and Pup won't be turned. His train of thought was cut short by another bout of thrusts and blows into his chest and stomach, and the red-hot spike buried itself deeper in his chest.

  If I'm going to Heaven, then why does it hurt like hell?

  He still had presence of mind to look down and find Roy's cabin, using the funeral pyre of the shed as a guide. It was getting hard to see now; he was very high, so high that if there had been birds in the time warp, they might have had to bank and swerve around him.

  The cabin wasn't hard to find. All he had to do was wipe the tears from his eyes and trace the line of ants, meandering away from the inferno he had made and throwing themselves into the writhing mass of bodies that besieged the little log house.

  Emmit was reminded of a time when he was a boy, riding his junky ten-speed down the sidewalk and chomping on a flavorless piece of gum. He had seen something moving on the sidewalk in front of him, something that looked like a shadow that was cast by nothing and yet changing shape constantly. He had parked his bike and squatted to see what he had discovered, and it had been a gigantic swarm of black ants. The biggest he had ever seen.