From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (75 page)

If he had been a
movie hero, Ken would have accompanied that statement with a dramatic turn
toward the vault door. He would have swaggered over to the thin line of light
that was the only demarcation between their dark bunker and the greater
darkness outside, and left to save his loved ones without a second thought.

But he wasn’t that
guy. He was a history teacher. Granted, he thought of himself as fairly
resourceful, okay in a fight. But he was still just a normal guy. Still
scared witless at the idea of going out there alone.

So he waited a
moment.

The moment
stretched out. He could hear Dorcas sniffing, sounding like she was trying to
suffocate her sobs before they could be born.

Aaron made no sound
at all. The epitome of the strong silent type.

Ken realized he was
waiting too long. He turned.

Aaron spoke.
“They’re probably dead.”

Ken didn’t turn to
face the other man. If he turned away from the vault door, he thought it
likely he wouldn’t have the strength to leave. He would just cower in the
darkness until the hordes found him, or until hunger and thirst claimed him.
Either way, he was dead. And he preferred to die looking for his family.

“I know,” he said.
“But I have to look.”

Aaron exhaled, a
long, steady breath of air that sounded like a man getting ready to do
something deeply unpleasant. “All right, then, let’s go.”

Ken felt his legs
trembling. “Dorcas?” he asked.

Dorcas, still
sniffling, said, “Don’t be stupid. You think I rescued you and dragged you all
over creation – twice – just so you could go off and die without me being there
to save you again?”

Ken felt something
move past him in the dark. A moment later, a deep grunt signaled that it was
Aaron. The crack of light at the vault’s entrance widened slightly, and Ken
could make out the squat man pushing the thick steel door open.

As soon as it was
wide enough, Aaron slipped through the gap. “Come on,” he said. “I don’t plan
to be out at night.”

Ken nodded. He
reached behind him in the darkness. Dorcas’ hand clasped his.

They stepped out of
the safety of the vault. Into brightness. Into danger.

Into hopeless hope.

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.