From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (72 page)

They were awake.
The zombies were awake.

One looked like it
had reached out for Dorcas as she passed and now it had a tight grip on her
arm. She couldn’t swing her lug wrench, either, because the zombie – a fat,
middle-aged man wearing board shorts and no shirt – had grabbed her on the side
where she held her weapon. She couldn’t get a swing.

The other zombie
was another man. Younger, with tattoos running up and down thickly muscled
arms. He was reaching for her from behind as Dorcas struggled to keep away
from the fat man in front of her.

Ken moved without
thinking. He ran to Dorcas, grabbing her wrench. She resisted for a fraction
of an instant before realizing that it was him grabbing, then let it loose and
used her now free hand to keep the fat man at bay.

Ken didn’t have
time to swing the wrench at the younger of the monsters. He just flipped it
sharp end up and jabbed. The flat end of the lug wrench slammed right through
the zombie’s head, going up through the base of its nose and then out the back
of its skull.

Pink ooze flowed
down the length of the lug wrench. Ken wanted to drop the thing, but forced
himself to keep hold. Even when the goo ran down onto his fingers and arms,
feeling like a thick, warm, melted milkshake. He
had
to hang on.
Because the zombie – or whatever it was – didn’t die.

The wound was
mortal. There was no way for something to survive a hit like that. But the
strong young man didn’t fall. Didn’t die. He started shrieking, screaming, snarling,
and gnashing his teeth.

He grabbed Ken’s
hands, effectively pinning them to the lug wrench. And started pulling himself
down along the length of the iron haft. The flat end of the wrench seemed to
grow like an iron plant out of the back of his head. His jittering teeth came
closer and closer to Ken’s hands.

And Dorcas was
still screaming. A good thing, he supposed. It meant she was alive; that she
hadn’t been bitten. Hadn’t turned.

The tattoed zombie
was still sliding itself down the lug wrench. More and more of that pink goo
welled from the zombie’s wound, and the more that dripped across Ken’s hands
and arms, the more the thing seemed to go completely insane. Its body spasmed,
its head tried to whip back and forth even though pinned in place by the bar.

Ken grunted.
Inches from a bite.

He threw a quick
look over his shoulder. Dorcas was on the ground, the fat man on top of her.
One arm was twisted strangely at her side. The other was pressed flat against
the fat man’s forehead, trying to push his teeth away from her face and
throat. And failing, an inch at a time.

Ken grunted.
Stepped back and tried to play the world’s deadliest game of Crack The Whip as
he spun the zombie around in a tight arc. At the same time, he fell to his
side.

The move jerked the
lug wrench free with a snap and a spray of blood and sludge. It also tore the
zombie’s head sideways, pulling off a good amount of skin.

There was no way
Ken was going to get his feet under him in time to counter any further attack.

But that was the
risk he had taken. Hoping that this zombie, like the others he had seen who
had suffered major head trauma, would lose whatever sense guided it to attack
only humans.

And it worked. The
thing’s face swiveled as the wrench pulled out of it. Its gaze fell on the fat
zombie that was only an inch from chewing through Dorcas’ cheek.

The younger
monster, still oozing puddles of viscous pink slime, fell on the back of the
fat man with a scream. Began beating at it with fists, biting the back of its
neck.

Ken got to his feet
and ran at them both. He body checked the fat man, pushing the squirming mass
of madness partway off Dorcas. Then he yanked her the rest of the way out.
She screamed when he pulled her by her broken arm. He ignored it. No time to
be gentle.

The young zombie
and the fat one were biting at one another. Screaming. Blood and flesh
started to flow as they pulled each other apart, one piece at a time.

“Come on,” said Ken
to Dorcas. He pulled her to her feet. She almost fell, her knees wobbly from
fear or shock or pain. “Come
on
,” he said again, giving her a quick
shake.

He leaned down and
scooped the lug wrench off the ground, then stood and put Dorcas’ good arm over
his shoulder. He didn’t know if she needed it or not, but he wasn’t going to
chance his only friend in the Apocalypse falling over and dying of shock.

Not when there
are so many more
exciting
ways to die.

“Ken,” she said.

“If you’re about to
say, ‘Just leave me,’ forget it.”

She snorted. “I
was going to say, don’t you
dare
leave me. Not after I saved your ass.”

He almost laughed.

But didn’t. He had
to save his breath. Because he heard something that sounded like thunder.
Only there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

They were on South
Americana Boulevard, crossing West River Street. A few blocks ahead of them,
the massive footings of the I-84 freeway dropped to earth. The freeway curved
and dropped down a ramp and converted gradually to city streets.

The thunder sound
was coming from in front of them. From the rear. From all sides.

“What is that?”
Dorcas panted.

Ken just shook his
head. He had no idea. But knew it couldn’t be anything good.

Ahead, the darkness
where South Americana crossed under the freeway ramp seemed to roil. It
billowed in on itself, then exploded.

Dorcas cursed, the
word spitting out of her like a bullet.

It was like the
bees again. Only this time it was a mass of things that had once been human.
He couldn’t make out any details, couldn’t see the eyes or the madly gaping
mouths. But he didn’t have to. There was something tremendously unnatural in
the way they were running. Pounding along the blacktop at bullet speeds, but
not in any way he associated with a panic riot.

They were running
as a
unit
. Coordinated. No unnecessary bumping or shoving. Together
in a way that was almost as disconcerting as the mayhem he felt rolling off
them in waves.

He skidded to a
stop. Turned.

Saw another dark
mass of death speeding at them from the other end of the street.

He broke right,
running to the closest building with windows: a homeless shelter. He hadn’t
even known the place existed, and felt a strange pang of shame at that. Boise
was one of those places where no one seemed to
be
homeless. People had
money problems – he was one of them – but they always seemed to be in the “pain
in the ass but manageable” category.

The place looked
like a warehouse, mostly brick and concrete. But the front was a series of
windows. Which made Ken very uncomfortable. He remembered the cop, beating against
the windows of the car.

How long will
those windows hold up if the zombies try to get in?

Beggars can’t be
choosers, Ken.

He pulled Dorcas
toward the place. She resisted long enough to pull her arm from around his
shoulders, then she was running under her own steam.

The thunder was
deafening. A thousand, maybe ten thousand, pairs of feet hitting the pavement
in a cadence that was somehow both chaotic and unified. Each running at his or
her own pace, but all with one purpose: to rend and kill and
change
.

They got to the
front door of the shelter. Glass, just like the ten-foot windows that fronted
the place. Most of the windows had smears of blood across them, inside and
out.

Ken hit the door
with his shoulder. A sign across it said, “We are open for
YOU
!”

The door shuddered
in its frame, but didn’t open.

Locked.

Ken looked inside
the shelter. He didn’t think he and Dorcas had time to go somewhere else. But
he also didn’t want to just break the glass – what would be the point of hiding
somewhere with a wide open door?

He saw what looked
like a soup kitchen setup: long tables, benches. Hot food setup in the back.

Everything was in
disarray. Tables upended, benches overturned. A folding metal chair hung from
a sparking bank of fluorescent tubes.

Lots of bodies.
Lots of blood.

Nothing moving,
though. Whatever happened here had remained here. Had stayed contained.

Not like the
now-deafening thunder.

“We gotta get
inside,” said Dorcas.

Ken nodded. He
rattled the door once more, as though hoping it might have magically unlocked
in the last second. Then he raised the lug wrench to smash through.

And a man appeared
in the wreckage beyond the door.

He looked
terrified, worry and grime and blood caking his face and making it difficult to
see how old or young he was. But he had dark hair and a bristly-looking
goatee.

“Let us in!”
shouted Ken.

He could hear
individual footsteps in the thunder, now. The shelter was slightly recessed
from the street, but he had no doubt that the mass of monsters was only maybe a
hundred feet away. Less.

The man in the
shelter just shook his head.

“Let us in!” Ken
screamed, fear cracking his voice into sharp jags.

Dorcas pounded her
good fist against the window beside the door. “Please, we’ll die!” she
screamed.

The man pointed
beside him.

There was a little
boy there. Holding the man’s hand.

Ken cursed. “We
can help you!” he screamed. “We don’t have to do this alone!”

The man shook his
head.

Ken raised his lug
wrench to smash through the window.

“What about the
boy?” said Dorcas.

“I have a family,
too,” said Ken. He looked at Dorcas. She seemed to be considering his words.
“We’re better off together,” he said. He brought the lug wrench down.

And stopped it in
mid-air.

The man in the
shelter had drawn a black, snub-nosed revolver and was pointing it right at
Ken’s chest.

Ken looked at the
man’s eyes. Had no doubt the man would shoot him if he continued his swing.

He nodded.

“Come on.”

They would have to
outrun the thunder.

He turned.

And saw the first
creature come into view past the corner of the building closest to them.

It was a man in
blue jeans. He was wearing a Boise State U. baseball cap and matching blue and
orange t-shirt. No blood on him, other than a single spot on his hand where he
must have been bitten.

He saw Ken and
Dorcas and snarled. Swerved to run at them.

Ken ran. He knew
Dorcas was right behind.

They ran in the
only direction open to them: the thin bit of asphalt between the homeless
shelter and the building beside it. The slap/crash of ten thousand feet
pounded into the area after them.

Ahead was a chain-link
fence that enclosed the back of the shelter as well as some other structure
that looked like a supply building or maybe a large disconnected garage.
Either way, it looked like it was closed up tight, and was certainly too tall
to get on top of.

Beyond the chain-link
fence – almost irrelevant information for Ken’s brain to process since there
was no way they could climb over the twenty foot fence before they were
overwhelmed by the horde behind them – there was just a blank wall of
concrete. A huge footing of the I-84, an unbroken length of concrete where the
freeway lowered to within thirty feet of the ground.

Dorcas started to
slow. Ken could tell she had seen the same things he had. The fact that they
were running into a dead end.

“Come
on
,”
he barked, grabbing her arm and yanking it.

“Why?” she
muttered, but ran on.

He felt like she
was right. But felt like he couldn’t just stop. He owed it to his family to
try.

All the way to the
end.

Then he saw
something. Tossed the lug wrench away. Dorcas veered as though to grab it.

“Leave it!” he
shouted. And grabbed what he had seen.

Dorcas gasped as
though realizing what he was going to do. She grabbed it as well.

The zombies were
only fifty feet behind them.

And now he realized
that they were in front of him, too: filtering into the space on the other side
of the fence, between the shelter property and the freeway footing.

“We can’t go over,”
panted Dorcas.

“I know.” He
veered to the sturdy structure on their right. “Change of plans.”

As he turned, he
saw the zombies that had followed them into the funnel between the shelter and
the other building, a concrete block of a place with a sign proclaiming, “Get
fit for the rest of your life! Free introductory YOGA classes!”

The things were
thirty feet away.

He ran the last
feet to the disconnected concrete building behind the homeless shelter. Threw
what he was holding against the side. Dorcas helped him, adjusting the tall
ladder that had been laying against the side of the shelter until it cleared
the roof of the storage building.

Twenty feet. The
growling hit him hard, worse even than it had in the school. It felt like he
was being punched by someone who had a roll of nickels wrapped in his fist.

He shoved Dorcas up
the ladder ahead of him. She started moving, faster than he would have thought
someone could climb one-handed.

He was up an
instant later.

The zombies were
ten feet away.

Dorcas cleared the
ladder. On the roof.

Five feet.

Ken jumped up the
last few rungs. Onto the roof.

Two feet.

The zombies, led by
the blue-jeaned BSU fan, reached for the ladder.

Ken grabbed the ladder
and pulled it up after him. He felt it shudder in his hands as some of the
zombies’ fingers brushed it, but none managed to grasp it or pull it down. He
didn’t know if they could use it, but he didn’t want to find out.

He flipped the
ladder up over the edge of the building.

It hit the roof
with a clank.

Safe.

Then he felt
Dorcas’ hand on his shoulder, tight and slick against his still-bare skin. She
squeezed convulsively.

Ken looked down.
His breath caught painfully in his throat.

The zombies didn’t
need
a ladder.