Genesis (16 page)

Ken hadn’t seen the bank coming in, of course.  So he wasn’t prepared for what waited outside the vault.

Like a lot of banks in Boise, this one was fairly small.  Just a vault that led into a small anteroom, then directly into the bank proper.

It was filled with the dead.  People who must have been here right before or during lunch breaks.  Ken realized that Becca had noticed the first bugs at around 11:30.  And now it was… he glanced at a wall clock.  Analog, and it must be running on batteries, because the second hand was still sweeping along like everything was normal.  2:25 in the afternoon.

It had only been three hours.  Three hours, and according to the faceless person on the television, almost everyone on the planet was either dead or converted to one of the things, one of the zombies.

None of the zombies were in here, only the aftermath.  Limp forms laying across desks, tables, the floor.  A pair of men lay atop one another nearby, frozen in a final tableau that made it all too easy to determine how each had died.  A few feet from them, a woman slumped across one of the teller stations, her arm reaching under the bulletproof acrylic as though to take a deposit from a customer.  Only the woman didn’t have a hand at the end of her arm.  She must have bled out and died like that.

Bodies and blood everywhere.  Made even more gruesome in the half-light that illuminated everything: the sunlight filtering in through polarized windows at the front of the bank.

The street outside appeared deserted.

Ken realized he hadn’t tried to call Maggie.  He hadn’t had a single moment to do so, not more than ten seconds where he wasn’t concentrating on the pressing question of his own survival.  Now he took his cell phone out of his pocket.  It turned on as though everything were normal, and he saw three bars at the corner of the display: enough to indicate plenty of coverage.

He dialed Maggie’s cell number.  Held the phone to his ear.

Ken saw Aaron turn and spot him.  The other man’s eyes widened.  “Don’t –” began the man.

Ken ignored him.  Turned away.

The phone rang once.

Ken felt Aaron pulling on his shoulder.

The phone rang again.

The line picked up.

Ken was grinning, even though Aaron was pulling on him.  Expecting to hear Maggie’s voice.  Maybe one of the kids.

What came out of his phone, though, was the background noise of a nightmare.

His first thought was that it was the EAS; that the President
was
still alive, and was somehow broadcasting aid instructions to cell phones in the area.  Certainly the noise that came out of the phone possessed the same grainy, rasping quality that the computer tone at the beginning of the televised alert had.

A moment later, though, the sound seemed to be drilling holes in Ken’s brain.  It was like he had found a way to access every horrific memory of his life, and have every one of them come tumbling forward into the forefront of his mind.

The time Derek swallowed a marble and almost choked to death.

Hope’s pneumonia.

The months after Ken graduated college and found that the job market had dried up and he was about to bring a child into a world without any idea of how to take care of it.

His parents’ deaths.

The pain when he had surgery as a child, the doctor digging in his shoulder with a scalpel without using anesthesia because doing so would have made it harder to find the source of the infection.

On and on and on.

And under it all, a current of something worse than the pain and terror and rage and fear.

It was something Ken didn’t have a word for.  Something beyond hopelessness.  A sense that all was not merely
lost
but
worthless
.  That any value he might once have felt in his life, his loved ones, was overblown and ridiculous.  Muted by the reality of a universe that would not notice at all if the world were swept clean of all human life.

He wanted to lay down and die.

A hand closed over his.  He barely felt it.  But when the hand tore the phone away from his ear…
that
he noticed.  It was the most exquisite pain, the most divine of agonies.  The horrific memories that had bubbled to the surface of his mind became stronger for an instant – an instant that seemed an eternity – and then sank back to the depths of his consciousness.

“No phones,” said Aaron.  He pointed at something.

Ken felt fuzzy, like he was waking up after a night of heavy drinking.  But he managed to look in the direction Aaron was pointing at.  It was a man in a nice suit, laying in the corner of the bank.  He had a phone to his ear, and his eyes stared sideways at nothing.

He wasn’t breathing.  Ken suspected he had listened to the sounds in the phone until he had simply shut down, until his mind somehow managed to tell his heart to stop beating.  Until oblivion became not merely a respite, but the only way to escape the mental rapine of the tone.

“How’d you know?” said Ken.

“I tried to call my brother,” said Aaron.  “
Dorcas
saved me.”

The look in Aaron’s eyes told Ken that the admiration
Dorcas
had for the cowboy was mutual.  That made him feel good for some reason.  Like even though the world was ending, there was still a chance as long as people were making connections.

He glanced at
Dorcas
.  She was actually blushing.  And that made Ken feel better still.

Then the pounding started.  And that made him feel much, much worse.

Ken looked around and saw every single one of the zombies pounding on a car parked at the curb outside the bank. 

Just one.  But by now Ken’s brain automatically figured that it was like seeing a single ant at a picnic.  “Just one” really meant “more to come.”

He dropped to his knees, moving behind one of the freestanding counters that the bank provided for people to fill out deposit and withdrawal slips. 
Dorcas
and Aaron were already hunched behind another one.

“Is it locked?” Ken whispered, signaling at the door.

Aaron shook his head.

Ken sighed, but figured it didn’t matter much.  The things would get in if there were more than a few of them.

A scream.  Raw and thin, as though the person screaming had exactly enough energy left for that single sound.  Ken couldn’t tell if the noise came from a man, woman, or child.  And he didn’t want to know.

But he poked his head over the top of the counter.  Because
Dorcas
had saved him.  Aaron had saved both of them.  So if he could help someone else, he would have to do it.

The scream was coming from the car outside the bank.  The one the zombie was pounding on.  Only now the zombie had been joined by three others.  They were all large men, brawny in a way that Ken associated with bouncers or bikers: thick through the chest and gut, wearing cut-off sleeves that showed tan and muscled arms.

Another scream from inside the car.  And Ken didn’t know what to do.

He heard a whirring, clicking sound beside him.  Looked over.  It was Aaron.  He was holding a pistol, what looked like a .357 Magnum, black and bug-like and deadly.  The clicking came as he spun the cylinder, which was hanging to the side.  Then he looked at Ken and shook his head, holding up two fingers.

Ken didn’t ask where the other bullets had gone.  Probably expended before Aaron had found him and
Dorcas
.  Regardless, two was not enough to help whoever was in the car.

He wondered if he should try to help anyway.  If there was any way to take on the four zombies that seemed intent on beating their way into the vehicle.

Then the question became moot with a sound of thunder.

A horde had arrived.

He had no way of knowing how many there were.  Hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands – however many it was, one moment there were only the four brawny zombies pummeling at the car outside the bank, and the next moment the car was gone, drowned in a sea of once-humanity.  The growling, snarling mass of monsters were all focused on the car, and even over the noise of their shouts Ken could hear the louder sounds of the car being hammered by hundreds of fists.

Ken dropped back behind the deposit slip station.  He looked over at
Dorcas
and Aaron.  Only ten feet away, but they seemed to be in another world.

Dorcas
was staring at him.  Her eyes alight with terror.  Aaron cocked the hammer on his gun, readying one of his remaining two rounds.

Glass crashed.  Ken winced, expecting to hear the growling invade the bank.  But it was the sound of the car’s windows smashing in.

Another scream – all-too human.  And all-too short.

Then, silence.

Even the growling that was the zombies’ apparent trademark ceased.

Ken peeked over the top of the counter, suspecting what he would see.

Faces.  Bloody and broken.  Whole and unblemished.  A strange mix of the perfect and the profane.

Every one of them tilted upward, every one of their mouths open wide.

Every single person breathing in unison.

He dropped back down.  Looked at Aaron and
Dorcas
.  “We should go.  Now.”

Dorcas
didn’t move.  Aaron shook his head.

“Trust me,” he said to Aaron.  “I’ve seen this before.”

“
So’ve
I,” said Aaron.

“When you were out it happened again,” whispered
Dorcas
.

“Twice,” added Aaron.

“So you know, now’s the time to
go
,” said Ken.  “What happens if they wake up and we’re still here?”

“The times they spend doing… that…,” said
Dorcas
, motioning vaguely at the mass of zombies only a dozen feet away.  “It’s….”  She searched for words.

“It’s getting shorter,” said Aaron.  “Each time, it gets shorter, like there’s some internal countdown happening.”

A shudder ran through Ken’s frame.  His head thudded in time with his speeding heartbeat.  “What happens when the countdown reaches zero?” he asked.

No one answered.

Outside, the horde could still be heard breathing:
in-out-in-out-in-out
….

Then
snap
.

The growling began again.

And Ken knew if he’d gone out there, he would have just been stepping into their midst when they came back to reality – or whatever passed for reality in their minds.

A few of the zombies began knocking on the bank windows.  Tapping gently, almost tenderly.

Tap, tap, tap….

Fingernails coated with gore, hands slick with blood.

Tap, tap, tap….

Ken felt like he was in a children’s fairy tale.  Like he, Aaron, and
Dorcas
were the three little pigs.  He remembered very clearly that things ended badly for two of those pigs.

And that was with only one Big Bad Wolf.  Outside this particular house of straw, there were thousands of them.

Tap, tap,
tappppp
….

The tapping grew louder as more hands slapped the glass.

“Little pig, little pig, let me in,” he whispered to himself.