Genesis (20 page)

In his flight up the dark stairs, through a disembodied structure that had no right to be there, Ken had forgotten that the zombies following them weren’t the only ones they had to worry about.

There were also the ones that had been coming in through the
other
side of the building.

Those zombies had come in, had joined with the ones following the survivors.  And Ken had assumed for some reason that that was it.  Done deal.

But he was wrong.  The ones that had joined up with their pursuers were just a small portion of the horde that had come at them from ahead.

This horde numbered at
least
in the tens of thousands.  And they were all crammed into the street right below Ken’s feet.  Growling and howling in a macabre imitation of a New Year’s celebration at Times Square.  Only instead of waiting for a glowing ball to drop, they were reaching up in the obvious hope that flesh and bone would plummet to their grasp.

And as they had done when he and
Dorcas
were on the garage, they were swarming on top of one another.  A dark wave of
unlife
: burying itself, rising a bit, burying itself again, rising still further.

They were easily thirty feet below him.

Only now it was twenty-nine.

Twenty-eight.

And the growl….

Give up.  Give in.  Give up.  Give in
.

“Now would be a good time to move,” said the kid.

Ken almost jumped off the side of the building.  The kid had come back, sidling silently to Ken’s side and standing within a few feet of him.  He was holding one-handed to a piece of
weatherstripping
that looked almost strong enough to hold up a malnourished infant.  Still grinning. 

“Just follow me, bud,” said the kid.

And Ken hated him not at all.  Just followed him.

He heard crunches and crackles and knew that either
Dorcas
or Aaron was close behind.  But he didn’t look back, afraid that if he did he would also see the surging things below.

How close are they, Ken?  Give up….

Just climb.

Twenty feet?  Eighteen?  Give in….

CLIMB!

The kid moved quickly but carefully, and Ken realized his motions were slightly exaggerated: he was showing the others where to grip, where to place their feet.

“What’s your name?” said Ken.  Not an appropriate moment, perhaps, but he didn’t want to think about what he was doing, didn’t want to think about what was below, didn’t want to ponder what might lay ahead.

“Christopher.  Watch out for that glass.”

Ken shifted his hands in time to avoid gashing his palms.

The end of the building was coming up.  He didn’t know what they would do then.

The growls below were close.  Getting closer.

Worse, he heard growls inside the structure.  The zombies inside seemed to have been thrown off by the fact that their prey had disappeared from the building, but how long before one of them spotted the survivors at a window frame?

Aaron grunted.  “I think we got trouble.”

Ken looked at Christopher.  The kid was grinning again.  Or still.  Maybe he hadn’t stopped.  And now Ken was unsure whether he hated the kid or not.  He suspected the teen might be a bit crazy.

Crazy or not, Christopher didn’t seem perturbed by the sound of zombies closing in on them from inside the building, or by the zombies surging toward their feet.  He swung his pack around and unzipped it.

“You trust me?” he said to Ken.

Ken felt suddenly ill.  “Do you trust me?” was the kind of question
designed
to make someone uncomfortable.  Like saying, “I love you” to someone, there were only two possible outcomes: bliss or Titanic-scale wreckage.  And the possibilities for bliss were limited when zombies were coming at you from all sides and from below.

A new set of noises chipped in at the edges of Ken’s already severely fragmented thoughts.  He looked up, unsure if he was trying to zero in on possible new threats or just avoiding the kid’s question.

And saw that the zombies were above them as well.  On the roof.  Leaning over.  Leaning out of the windows of the floor above them.

Some of them leaned too far.  They fell.  Not afraid, still reaching as they fell. 
Dorcas
screamed as one of the plummeting beasts almost grabbed her tank top on its way past.  Another of the falling creatures actually got a hand on the sill that Aaron stood on, but the cowboy kicked the beast in the face and it, too, fell.

Not far.  The rising, turbulent mass of the creatures on the street was now only about fifteen feet below them.

Give up.  Give in.  Give up.  Give in….

“Do you trust me?” the kid said.

Ken looked at him.  The words, “Hell, no,” sprung to his lips.

And died there.

The kid wasn’t grinning.

Ken nodded.

The grin came back.  “Good.  Then I need you guys to stay right where you are.”

“
WHAT?
” Ken shrieked.  Then he had to flatten himself against a shard of glass, trying not to impale himself as another zombie threw itself at him from above.  He felt it pass by, felt the small hairs on his neck – the few that hadn’t been burnt, bludgeoned, or beaten into oblivion – blown by the wind of the thing’s passing.

When he pulled back again, the kid was gone.

“Where is he?  Where’s Christopher?”

Neither Aaron nor
Dorcas
answered.  They were busy dodging the things tossing themselves down at them like grasping, bloody spears.

Ken looked to his left.  The building ended in a corner about twenty feet away.  No idea what was beyond
that.

But he couldn’t stay.  He knew that was what the kid – Christopher – wanted.  But staying was suicide.

Zombies below.

Zombies above, throwing themselves down.

Ken thought about going back in the building.  He looked through the shattered glass of the window he stood before.

It looked like it had once been an office.  Maybe an insurance company or a brokerage firm.  Something that used a lot of cubicles, a lot of phones.  Everything was a wreckage of wires and computer pieces and modular foam walls that had been tossed around like the building blocks of an angry child.

The wreckage was the only reason the zombies in the office hadn’t grabbed Ken,
Dorcas
, and Aaron yet.  As it was, they were only a few feet away.

The zombies growled.

Ken felt something grab him from behind.  Felt something clinging to him, felt a heavy weight hit him like a bludgeon.

His foot slipped.

Ken felt something breathing in his ear.

Then he heard
Dorcas
scream and saw her kick out.  The thing on his back chuffed, not in pain but in something like irritation.  She kicked again.  It fell.

Ken almost fell, too, his body fairly leaping upward as the extra weight left his body.  He lurched forward, not caring that he almost skewered himself on a shard of glass.  Just wanting not to fall to the things below.

Ten feet below.

But not as close as the zombies
within
the building.  They were only a few feet away.

Reaching for him.  For
Dorcas
.  For Aaron.

And where was the kid?  Where the hell had Christopher gone?  Had he abandoned them?

It was a tough world – and it had certainly grown tougher in the last hours.  Even in a place as neighborly as Idaho, people didn’t leave their doors unlocked anymore.  People worried.  They didn’t just
trust
.

But Christopher had asked Ken to trust
him
.

So did Ken trust him?

Yeah.

The things inside were five feet away.

Ken knew he should run.  Not that there were many places
to
run.  But he could have edged toward the corner of the building.  Tried to get away.  Tried to flee.

He didn’t.  He stood firm.

He trusted.

There was a moment of peace.  A single second - the fraction of an instant
between
seconds – where the world seemed to pause.  There was no fear, there was no blood and violence.  The zombies throwing themselves from above seemed to pause in midflight, the things cascading over each other in an effort to reach up seemed to stop piling higher.

The monsters that were now only inches away from reaching Ken and his friends seemed to cease all motion.  He could see their teeth bared, the blood caked on so many of their faces, the skin pulled from bare bones on others.

But he felt no fear.  He felt only regret.  Sadness that he wasn’t going to see Maggie, wasn’t going to kiss her one last time.  That he wouldn’t hold Derek, Hope, or Liz.

And then even that was gone.  There was only a strange something that was at once familiar and unknown.

Resignation?

No.

Then, before he could figure out exactly what the feeling was, he heard four words.

“Hold on to something!”

Ken’s hands clenched.  He didn’t even know
what
they were holding.  But they held on tight.  In the next instant there was a flash so bright it felt like a new sun had been born right in front of him.

The world snapped back into motion.

The feeling that he had been on the verge of understanding was gone.  Disappeared in the brightness.

Boom
.

The zombies in the building, the monsters that had a moment before been only inches from grabbing him, screamed in what sounded like rage, loss, anger.

Ken opened his eyes.  Stars and neon Rorschach inkblots swam past his face.  But even through them he could see the zombies.  No longer inches away.  No, they had been decimated.  Incinerated, blasted to pieces.  Some of them – the ones closest to Ken and the others – were still in one piece.  But they were dazed.  Confused.  Skin shredded from bones in awful wounds that would have killed a human and
should
have killed these things.

They stood.  Probably a dozen of the zombies left within range.  Still more than enough to kill Ken and
Dorcas
and Aaron ten times over.  Especially since a single bite would finish any of them.

The closest one to
Dorcas
– a man with a mangled face who wore a bright shirt that said, “ASK ME ABOUT OUR DAILY SANDWICH SPECIALS” under swaths of blood – reached for her. 
Dorcas
leaned back, but couldn’t get far because the things above were still flying over the edges of the roof and the fourteenth floor, only the arc of their momentum keeping the creatures out of range.  And
Dorcas
only had one good hand.  No way for her to hold on, lean away,
and
fight off the things outside and inside the building.

Sandwich Special grabbed at
Dorcas
.  Put a bloody hand on her arm.

Ken moved toward her.

And again the voice: “Don’t move! 
Just hold on!
”

Sandwich Special yanked
Dorcas
forward, drawing her through the empty hole of the window by her broken arm.  She screamed.  Cried.

Something cracked.

The entire floor of the office beyond the windows turned from a chaotic shambles of blood and equipment into a shifting quicksand of concrete and steel.  The zombie let go of
Dorcas
, sliding into the hole that had opened up ten feet away.  It slid through and disappeared, followed by the other zombies in the room and covered by equipment and bodies.

Dust puffed out of the rooms, as though Sandwich Special were an overzealous illusionist seeking to obscure his
his
exit.

The entire building shook.  Not like it had when Aaron went through the floor.  That had been a shudder, a twitch.  This was a determined tremor, a seismic event.

“Come on,” said the voice, the same voice that had warned Ken and the other survivors to hang on.

Ken looked over.  And there was the kid.  There was Christopher.  Grinning again.

His backpack was gone.

The building lurched, and Christopher’s feet came off the sill he stood on.  His smile wavered, but didn’t disappear.  He got his feet back under him and started moving toward the corner of the building again, as though none of what had just happened had been at all unnerving or unusual.

Ken looked over at
Dorcas
.  She was gaping past him, so at least he wasn’t the only one stunned by what was going on.

Aaron just looked on.  Waiting to start moving.

Another zombie fell from above.  Fell to the horde that was now only about eight feet below them.  Ken felt his lips curl as he saw them, crushing one another to get to the few people above.  Destroying themselves in their single-minded need to kill.

He turned his head to the left.  Started moving.

Time to go.