From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (74 page)

Music. Boisterous
and bright.

Click.
Bzzzzz
.

Click. Silence.

Click. Micky Mouse
talking.

Click. Two kids
arguing. One of them said something snarky and a crowd of people laughed.

Click. Silence
again. Then… the growl.

Ken’s eyes
fluttered. He jerked into semi-wakefulness. His body slammed upright,
registering only peripherally that he was laying on something cold and very
hard.

It was dark.
Everything was dark. He felt like he’d been blinded. The only illumination
came from one of the
things
. Not three feet away.

He screamed.

The thing looked at
him. Its face was creased and blood-stained. Its eyes glinted like those of a
wolf.

It opened its
mouth.

“Easy, partner,” it
said.

And it turned its
gaze from Ken.

Ken felt his mouth
slam shut, the scream cutting off abruptly.

A hand touched his
forehead, and he almost screamed again before he realized it was Dorcas.
“You’re hot,” she said. “We’ll have to find you some meds.”

“I’m fine,” he
mumbled. He looked at the thing again. The glowing figure. Only now it
seemed his eyes were working better, because he could see that it wasn’t a
thing, and it wasn’t glowing. It was a man, hunched over a box that seemed at
once familiar and alien, a relic of a world already ten times removed from
Ken’s reality.

A television.

The man was sturdy
and squat, with relaxed features and a weathered face that spoke of a life
spent outdoors. He looked, Ken thought, like one of those men you ran into who
“wrassled” things – things like bears, gators, and small countries – for a
living. Men who had an ageless quality about them. Beards flecked with gray,
as this man’s beard was, but whose hands and arms were the hands and arms of a
man in his prime.

He looked like –
and probably was – a cowboy. The real kind. Not a poser, the kind who bought
hundred-dollar blue jeans and rode horses on weekends, but the kind of man who
was as much at home on a horse as off, and whose jeans were designed for one purpose
only: to take as much punishment as possible and keep on going.

“That’s Aaron,”
said Dorcas. “He’s the one who rescued us.”

“Lucky us,” said
Ken.

“Luck nothing,”
said Dorcas. “He said he’d been watching from the freeway, trying to figure
out a way to help us.”

“You obliged by
coming to
me
, so thanks for that,” said Aaron. His gaze didn’t waver
from the television. The TV was turned away from Ken, so he couldn’t tell what
the other man was watching. But he still heard the growl that had awakened
him. The sound of at least one of those things.

“What are you
watching?” he said. “Where are we?”

He tried to stand
up. “Maybe you should –” Dorcas began, but he waved her off. She sighed and
put an arm under one of his. Helped him stand.

He realized Dorcas’
arm was bunched under fabric, not just slapping against his bare skin. In the
strange, flickering light he could see he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt
said, “I went to BOISE and all I got was this STUPID SHIRT (and a raging case
of
the CLAP
).”

He looked at
Dorcas. She grimaced. “We didn’t think you should just go around nekkid for
the rest of your life. Don’t ask where we got it.”

The back of Ken’s
head felt strange. Taut, like a drum that had been tightened too zealously.
He touched it and felt something hard and knotted there.

“You were banged up
pretty bad,” said Dorcas. “Aaron found some superglue and just glued you back
together.” She glanced at the cowboy. “He’s handy.”

Ken noticed that
Dorcas’ broken arm had been set, her forearm duct-taped to a ruler and then
hung from a sling made from an oversized handkerchief.

“Looks like he
is
handy,” said Ken. He took a few steps toward the older man, who still hadn’t
looked away from the television.

The sound of Ken’s
shoes echoed strangely and he looked around for the first time. The flickering
light of the TV bounced off four walls that seemed to be made of burnished
metal with tiny knobs set every few inches along their surfaces. The ceiling
had the same reflective quality, a long expanse with a small vent set into the
middle.

“Bank vault,” said
Dorcas.

Ken thought of
Maggie and the kids. The Wells Fargo Center. Could it be possible he’d made
it there in his sleep – or unconsciousness?

Even in the dim
light of the television set, Dorcas must have seen the hope on his face. She
shook her head. “We got as far as 11th Street when we saw another one of
those… hordes… coming at us. We were carrying you so we had to get away as
fast as we could.” She nodded toward Aaron, who was still glued to the TV set
like it was final seconds of an epic Superbowl. “He was the one who thought of
getting to the bank.”

“What bank?” asked
Ken. He tried to stand on his own. His head started throbbing again, but he
didn’t want to throw up. Progress.

“Bank of the Falls,”
said Aaron.

Ken’s stomach
plunged. They had actually gone backward. The Bank of the Falls was several
blocks north and west of where they had been, nowhere near where Ken wanted to
be.

Dorcas touched his
shoulder. “We’re doing our best,” she whispered.

Ken realized his
face must be an extremely open book. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just worried.”

The sounds coming
from the television got louder. The growl. Ken felt like he should have been
elated at the fact that there was still power in at least some parts of the
city: the world couldn’t have ended yet if you could still watch a show; could
still microwave a burrito, right? But instead he just felt dread at the sound
of that enraged snarl.

He moved toward the
TV. He remembered the feeling he had had when he first saw the bugs on his
classroom window: that feeling of not
wanting
to see, but
needing
to know.

He worried that
kind of thing would kill him.

But he worried more
that not knowing would kill him faster.

He joined Aaron in
front of the television.

At first Ken didn’t
know what he was looking at. The camera kept tilting and moving. Then he
recognized the bits and pieces of the background as the studio for one of the
local news affiliates: all greens and blues and expensive-looking graphics.

And in the
background, like the world’s most macabre laugh track, the continuing noise of
the growl.

“Where’s it coming
from?” said Dorcas.

A moment later, the
answer presented itself. A woman came into view. She was close to the camera,
her hands on either side of the frame as though she was embracing the
equipment. Her hair and makeup had clearly been beautiful at one point, but
were now a nest of snarls and streaks.

She stared into the
camera.

“That’s Marie
Wells,” said Dorcas.

“Who?” said Ken.

“She’s one of the
anchors for Channel Seven News.”

Marie didn’t look
like she’d be anchoring anything anytime soon. She growled louder, as though
knowing that the people she desperately wanted to attack were on the other side
of the camera. Her lips pulled back, baring teeth that were stained and
clotted with the remains of something Ken preferred not to think about.

She headbutted the
camera.

The movement came
without any kind of telegraphing. One moment she was growling and snarling,
the next her forehead slammed into the lens. There was a splash of red as some
part of the equipment sliced her forehead wide open, and when she drew back the
image was blurred – whether because of blood or because of makeup Ken couldn’t
tell.

Marie could be made
out, a crimson curtain running down her face. She stumbled around, still
growling. No longer interested in the camera, but still clearly searching for
something – someone – to kill.

“Change it,”
whispered Dorcas.

Aaron reached out
and touched a button on the television. It flipped over to at Tom & Jerry
cartoon.

“That’s good news,
right?” said Ken. The others looked at him. “Things can’t be too bad if the
televisions are still going. Maybe this is only happening in Boise.”

Aaron and Dorcas
shared a glance. Dorcas nodded.

Aaron flipped to a
new channel.

Ken didn’t watch
much news. His interest in news stopped right around the end of the Korean
War. After that, things got too muddy for him. In fifty years, maybe the dust
would have settled enough for him to look back and understand just who had done
what to whom, but for now he mostly avoided contemporary information.

But he still knew
what the CNN logo looked like.

Usually, however,
the logo hung next to a ticker that highlighted breaking news items, and behind
it would be an anchorperson and a studio. Now the logo was beside a ticker
that sprouted nonsense, as though someone had fallen face first onto the
teletype.

There was no
anchor.

There
was
a
studio. Clusters of computer towers and monitors. Most of them splattered
with blood. Bodies laying across several tables.

And more than a
dozen of the things, the zombies, walking around between the dead.

Ken was reminded of
the zombies that had followed him out of the school. Like those few, these
moved in a strangely coordinated way. Not as though they were telling one
another what to do, more like…. He frowned, trying to conceptualize what he
was seeing.

It was like they
were tied to one another. As though an invisible rope that permitted only a
few feet of slack tied every zombie in the room to every other zombie. They
almost
orbited
each other. Moving over and around the debris-strewn
warzone that the studio had become, but never straying far from the other
monsters.

As Ken watched, one
of the bodies that he had thought was dead stood up on legs that were clearly
broken and began shuffling around as well, growling and snarling. Blood spurted
out of its legs with every step.

It fell
eventually. But didn’t stop growling as it crawled on the floor, pulling
itself along on hands that soon bled. Trying to stay with its brothers and
sisters.

“That ain’t Boise,”
said Aaron.

“No,” said Ken.
The word came out as a whisper, sounding almost like a prayer.

Dorcas reached out
and changed the channel back to Tom & Jerry. The mouse had enlisted the
aid of a bulldog to destroy the larger cat.

Ken looked at the
TV. It was on the vault floor, the electrical and cable inputs trailing out of
the barely-cracked door. Aaron or Dorcas must have grabbed it and brought it
in here.

“What about
computers?” he said. “The internet?”

“Checked it
already,” said Aaron. “A lot of the ‘net’s still active, and the power’s still
on – in this building, at least, and who knows how long that’s even going to
last – but there’s nothing about whatever all this is.” He heaved a sigh, and
now he did look old. Tired. He drew a hand over his face. “Whatever
happened, it happened so fast no one was ready.”

“What
was
it?” said Dorcas. “What did this?”

Before anyone could
answer, a new sound forced its way into their world. One Ken had heard
before. One they all had. And one that was both comforting and terrifying at
the same time.

The tone reminded
Ken of old modem connections: a grating computer modulation, followed by a
high-pitched tone designed to demand attention.

“EAS,” said Aaron.

“What?” asked
Dorcas.

“Emergency Alert
System,” said Ken.

“I thought they got
rid of that,” said Dorcas.

“They got rid of
the Emergency Broadcast System. In favor of the EAS, which is more localized,”
said Aaron. He flipped channels. The tones were on every one.

“I thought you said
they were local,” said Dorcas.

“They are,” said
Aaron. “Only one person has access to nationwide EAS.”

At that moment, the
tones cut off, replaced by a voice from the television, playing over the
cooking show that Aaron had stopped at. The voice was male, but somewhat
androgynous. Computerized, Ken guessed.

“The President of
the United States is dead,” said the voice. “So is the entire Cabinet, and their
Secret Service details. Washington, D.C., has fallen.”

Ken looked at
Dorcas. She looked more afraid than she had at any time before, even when they
were stranded atop a roof and surrounded by thousands of zombies.

“I’m the only one
left to do this, so… Jesus. I don’t even know why I’m doing it. So you can
know. So you can take whatever measures you deem necessary.” Even
computerized, the voice sounded drawn and weary.

“Get off the air,
you stupid ass,” muttered Aaron. “You’re just scaring people.”

“Who do you think
it is?” asked Dorcas.

Aaron shook his
head, whether because he didn’t know or didn’t want to say, Ken couldn’t tell.

The strangely
asexual voice continued. “We barely had enough time to read the first reports
before it hit us, too. It’s worldwide. Moscow sent us half a flash over the
emergency channels, then nothing. A minute later we got garbled reports of
zombies from Germany, maybe thirty seconds later we heard a few sentences from
London before they went dark, too. A minute and a half later it hit us.”

The voice went dead
for a long time. Long enough that Ken thought maybe it was done speaking.

“I can’t tell you
what to do. I can see swarms of them in the streets – the whole city, what
people are left alive. There are dozens of the things outside the door here, and
I only have a few seconds. Don’t wait for help from the government. If you’re
alive, you’re alone. You’re on your own.” Another pause, then the voice said,
“Near as we can tell, over fifty percent of the world’s population was
susceptible to the initial effect. That fifty percent attacked the rest of us,
and now we –”

The tones
returned. The beeps and the modem sounds that reminded Ken of someone taking a
Brillo pad to a disk drive.

“He’s gone,”
whispered Dorcas. She sounded like she was holding back tears.

“He was gone before
he started that broadcast, the dumb kid,” said Aaron. The short man reached up
and put an arm around Dorcas’ shoulders. She wilted into him.

Ken looked at
Aaron. The other man stared as though to say, “What now?”

Ken twisted his
back, feeling his joints. Everything hurt. But everything seemed to be
working, if only just barely.

The television
flickered, then went out. Ken heard snaps and relays as the power grid
failed. He didn’t know if it was just here, in this block, or if this time it
was city wide or state wide or everywhere.

And it didn’t
matter.

He could still feel
Aaron staring at him in the darkness.

“I’ve got to get
going,” he said. “My family’s out there.”