From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (80 page)

Ken realized that
he wasn’t completely trapped. He realized the crack hadn’t completely sealed
around his hand. He realized only his left pinky and ring fingers were pinned.
He realized that he couldn’t even feel them.

He realized none of
that mattered. Cutting off a part of your body – any part – was not something
the human race was equipped for.

Something scraped
at his lacerated legs.

“Move it, boy,”
said Aaron. The cowboy sounded composed as always, but Ken heard terror
seeping in around the edges of the calm tones.

He leaned into the
wall. He wiggled the knife blade between the two stones that had clamped him
in place. He couldn’t just take a swing at himself – the angle was bad, there
was no way he’d do it right. He’d end up bleeding to death and
still
be
pinned there on the side of the wall.

Instead, he pushed
the knife blade under his fingers. Using the knife hilt as a fulcrum and the
blade as a bar, he levered the knife upward just behind the point where the
fingers disappeared.

The pain bit him
hard and deep. He screamed. Leaned down harder on the knife. He couldn’t
even saw. Just had to use his body weight to drive the knife upward, parting
flesh and tendon and bone a millimeter at a time.

Warmth trickled out
of the gap between the stones. The things below seemed to delight in the life
raining on them. They raked at his legs. He had to stop, his fingers
half-severed, and step to higher footholds.

Three shadows fell
from above. Dorcas screamed. She fell back but Aaron grabbed her and managed
somehow to yank her back to safety. They both climbed a bit higher.

Ken leaned on the
knife again.

The last bits of
tissue separated. The knife blade flew upward as resistance disappeared, and
the knuckles of Ken’s right hand scraped against the stone below as the hilt
went down.

He realized at that
instant that his wedding ring was still attached to his dismembered finger.
The gold circle crushed between stones. He would never see it again. That
fact hurt almost as badly as the physical pain.

Then he felt
himself falling. He let go of the knife so he could grab onto the wall. His
entire soul ached at the idea of putting his right hand – his remaining good hand
– in another gap, but he had no choice.

He pushed his
bleeding left hand against his chest. He felt the pain, but it was cloaked,
like a fire under a blanket. It was there, it would consume the blanket and be
all the brighter for it in a moment. But for now it was only a hint of itself.

Ken moved quickly.
He didn’t know how long he would be able to keep climbing.

He moved across the
rest of the span of the inverted corner. He reached around to the adjoining
face of the building. He could hear Dorcas and Aaron, grunting and shouting
almost nonstop now as they fought off the waxing tide of zombies that were
reaching for them.

Ken pulled himself
around the corner.

The growling fell
away the second Ken turned the corner.

It was still there,
but so much less. The weight of the sound, of the call to lay down and die or
become one with the horde, fell off Ken’s shoulders and suddenly he felt like
he could get through this. The fact that he was in a very real sense less than
he had been a moment ago was something to be considered and dealt with… but it
could
be dealt with.

He also realized
that the scrabbling, grabbing hands that had been reaching for him an instant
before were no longer doing so. His legs hurt, and it seemed likely they
always would, but the pain was less an immediate thing. More a memory than a
now. Something that had receded into the background wall of noise, not a tidal
wave but merely storm surf crashing nearby.

Ken looked down.
This face of the One Capital Center building rested on the rubble that had once
been the northeast side of this portion of Idaho Street. The mountain of
debris was covered in jagged forests of rebar and concrete, glittering
glasswork shrubberies. The zombies crowded behind Ken, but they clearly couldn’t
climb it. At least, not as fast as they had climbed each other and the
smoother sides of the decapitated skyscraper.

Nor could the
zombies above reach them: the ones that threw themselves off the roof or the
floor above were impaled on rebar, or shattered on concrete pieces, or simply
fell brokenly down the mountain that had once been a monument to human
industry. A few stayed close, but they seemed hurt badly enough that they
couldn’t move quickly, couldn’t grab at their prey or bite them.

A reprieve.

“Come on!”

Ken looked over and
saw Christopher, waiting about twenty feet down the side of the building. He
was holding tight to a mullion, pulled in close so as not to be grabbed by any
of the falling creatures. But he was still grinning. Just a walk in the park.

Ken pulled himself
toward the kid. The building kept shaking, and he wondered what came next.
They couldn’t keep going around the skyscraper indefinitely – even if there
hadn’t been zombies on the front and back, he didn’t think the thing was going
to last much longer. Especially not if more and more zombies were climbing
into the stressed structure, which seemed likely given their single-minded
pursuit of anything human.

It struck him that
he had started to think of himself as human, and them as something else. Not
simply human and once-human, but human and
other
. Human and
alien
.
Human and
less
.

He slid over the
last few feet to Christopher. The numbness in his left hand was starting to
recede, that blanket starting to be consumed by the underlying pain.

“What now?” he
asked. He heard the muffled sounds of Dorcas and Aaron behind him. Realized
with macabre amusement that all three of them were operating one-handed. Only Christopher
looked fine, like he had rolled out of bed, gotten ready for the day, and then
decided to hang on the side of a beheaded skyscraper rather than go to the mall
or become a movie star.

Christopher looked
up. Another zombie fell, shrieking, and just missed pulling the kid over the
slope of the rubble and glass mountain.

“You kinda gotta
time this right,” he said. “And I can’t really come back to show you twice, so
be careful, okay?”

A zombie flew past
them. Rolled over the piles of glass and steel. Impaled itself on a long
spike of rebar, the metal going through its face and out the back of its
skull. It didn’t die, just as the other zombies that Ken had seen suffer major
head trauma had failed to expire. That viscous pink fluid spurted, and the
zombie began screaming and dancing a strange dance on the side of the mountain,
madness on chaos.

Then the zombie did
something new. The rebar spike entered its face through its cheek, emerging
just above the thing’s hairline in back. It couldn’t get off, but it stopped
shrieking and twitching. Its jaw opened, dropping down while its upper head
remained pinned in place by the rebar.

It coughed, the
same coughing that Ken had heard in the dark stairwell minutes before. A
strange noise, one that sounded like pieces of gravel were grinding together in
the zombie’s throat.

The thing vomited,
expelling ropy strands of bile. Some of the fluid splashed against the
concrete that held the rebar in place, and on the rebar itself. Black smoke
poured upward from the concrete and steel, and even from this distance Ken
could hear the acid hiss of materials being broken down.

“Good God,” said
Dorcas.

They were all
transfixed by the sight for a moment. But only a moment. Another zombie
pitched itself off the top of the building, sliding away to oblivion – but only
after nearly grabbing Aaron on the way down.

“Time to skedaddle,”
said Christopher, tearing his eyes away from the zombie. Its flesh was now
smoking, whatever acid it had expelled eating away at its own skin and bone as
it screamed.

“Watch close,” said
the kid. “Remember: no second chances.”

And he jumped off
the side of the building.

At first Ken
thought Christopher had just chosen an outrageously extravagant way to commit
suicide: rather than face the end of the world, he’d find a few struggling
survivors, con them by pretending he could save them from a conveniently placed
pair of zombie hordes, blow up half a building to do so, then convince them to
throw themselves into the equivalent of a thirty foot tall pile of knives and
broken glass.

In the next moment Ken
changed his mind. The kid wasn’t a suicide, he was a
magician
. Christopher
slid down the mountain about seven feet, narrowly missing hitting the same
jutting rebar that had skewered the still-jittering, still-
melting
zombie… and then he disappeared.

“What the…?” said
Dorcas.

Christopher’s head
popped into view. It seemed like it just appeared out of nowhere, the world’s
largest groundhog taking stock of the apocalyptic winter the world had spun
itself into. “Come on!” he shouted.

Ken shimmied over a
few feet. Moved quickly. He didn’t give himself a lot of time to think about
what he was doing.

When he was a
senior, he and some high school friends had found a pair of thick pads that the
wrestling team left out. They dared each other to greater and greater
gymnastic attempts. One of Ken’s buddies bet him a crisp ten-dollar bill that
he couldn’t do a backflip.

Ken stood on the
pad. Flipped. Earned himself ten bucks.

Another friend
asked him to do it again. Awestruck and disbelieving at Ken’s athletic
prowess.

Ken, more than a
little surprised himself, stood on the mat. But he wasn’t worried – he’d just
done it five seconds before, so no big deal, right?

And not only did he
fail to land the backflip, this time he was completely incapable of even
moving. The other guys jeered him about it, riding him mercilessly about his
complete lack of balls for most of the year, apparently forgetting that he had
knocked their socks off moments before.

Ken couldn’t figure
it out for the longest time. Couldn’t figure out why he could do it the first
time, the time he didn’t know what he was doing, but not the second time, when
he
did
.

It wasn’t until
reading about World War II landing invasions in college that he realized what
had happened. Reading about them, reading how the first wave guys weren’t the
bravest: it was the second wave soldiers. The soldiers who
knew
what
was going to happen. What waited. The enemy, the bullets, the death.

His body and mind
had realized what could happen. That he didn’t know what the hell he was
doing, and could have broken his neck. He got lucky once, but they weren’t
about to let him risk it again.

Sometimes reckless
action was the best way to proceed. Sometimes it was the only way things could
possibly work out.

Ken jumped.

He realized he
hadn’t bothered looking up, and hoped none of the rooftop zombies had chosen
that moment to come lurching down after him.

Reckless action
saved him. He hit the concrete mountain untouched. His feet slipped in dust
and pulverized concrete. They went out from under him and he slid headfirst
toward Christopher’s still-waiting head.

He passed the spiked
zombie. It seemed to be wilting. The black acid it had vomited had melted
most of its front, and Ken’s nose twitched as something that smelled like
vinegar seared his nostrils.

He looked back at Christopher.
At the kid’s grinning, disembodied-looking head.

The head
disappeared.

A moment later, Ken
did, too.

Ken fell into
strong arms, and immediately lashed out. He knew it was zombies. Because what
else could it be? What other thing would there be in this place, in this new
earth, that would hold him?

“Easy, man.”

The arms righted
him. Held him until his feet found purchase on solid ground. Then shoved him
away. Ken wheeled his arms as something dark slid between him and the
silhouette he recognized as belonging to Christopher. He heard Dorcas hiss as
the kid caught her as well, probably knocking her broken arm painfully.

Aaron fell down
into their hidey-space a moment later, not needing Christopher to steady him
but landing gracefully as a cat with the barest of sounds as his cowboy boots
hit the dusty material underfoot.

“Where are we?” Ken
said.

Christopher didn’t
answer right away. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a handkerchief that
he handed to Ken, gesturing to him to wrap his hand. Ken did, grimacing as the
pain of his missing fingers – both of which were still spitting blood out of
stubs that ended just past his knuckles – hit him anew.

He also thought it
strange that a kid this age should have a pocket handkerchief. Even before the
world came tumbling down, that would have been weird.

Aaron reached over
and tied a quick and efficient field bandage around Ken’s hand, knotting the
handkerchief so tightly it ached. Ken tried not to groan. Mostly because
Aaron didn’t make a sound about his own mangled fingers, using his one good
hand and his teeth to tie the handkerchief and moving so quickly it seemed he
had been born doing so.

“We’ll have to deal
with this soon,” said Aaron, looking at the already-reddening fabric on Ken’s
hand.

“Sure, we’ll just
stop at St. Luke’s on the way downtown,” said Ken. He meant it as a joke. It
came out thin and pallid, almost hopeless-sounding.

Aaron nodded as
though taking Ken’s statement seriously. And Ken suspected that if anyone
could find a working hospital in this mess of a world, it might be the cowboy.

“Come on,” said Christopher.
He pulled a small flashlight out of his back pocket and started leading Ken and
the others into a narrow passageway. On all sides were bits of cement, metal,
glass, wood. Everyday life reduced to formless nothing. Reality crushed by
forces it had been neither designed nor prepared to meet.

“I saw some people
come out of this hole a few hours ago, so I explored it,” said Christopher.
For a moment Ken didn’t understand what the kid was saying, then he realized he
was responding to Ken’s earlier question regarding where they were.

“Why would you do
that?” said Dorcas. She sounded winded, but Ken was amazed at the woman’s
stamina.

“Why not?” Ken
didn’t have to see Christopher’s face to know the kid was smiling. “Not much
else to do, other than stay alive.”

Ken didn’t know
whether he was hearing sublime wisdom or utter stupidity. On the one hand, it
sounded like Christopher was handling the collapse of humanity better than
anyone here. On the other hand, Ken thought he would have found something
better to do than just go exploring. Hell, he
was
doing something
better.

“What happened to
the people?” asked Dorcas.

“Some of the creeps
got ‘em.”

“The what?”

“The things.”

“So you went in to
explore?” Incredulity spiked Dorcas’ voice.

Christopher didn’t
sound offended when he replied. “Sure. Lucky for you I was doing it, too. Otherwise
I wouldn’t have spotted you guys getting into trouble and wouldn’t have been
able to do my Knight in Shining Armor act.”

“You were all
alone? Where’s your family?” said Ken. He wanted to slap himself as soon as
he said it. It was the kind of thing you asked about before. Not now.

Christopher
sighed. “Lucky us, we were all together when it happened. Dad killed Mom, she
took him down as she died.”

“I’m sorry,” said
Dorcas.

Christopher’s
shoulders bounced up and down. “I think they’d been wanting to do it for a while.
The only reason we were together was for a photo op. The marriage was mostly
for electoral purposes, you know?”

Behind Ken, Aaron chuckled.
“Thought I recognized you. Your Elgin’s kid.”

“Guilty as
charged.”

Ken kept following
the kid – the
young man
, he corrected; he now knew that “the kid” was in
fact twenty-two years old – but his footsteps stuttered a bit.

“You’re Bud Elgin’s
son? Governor Elgin?”

Christopher didn’t
answer. He clicked off his light, but Ken could still see enough to make his
way through the fissure in the ruined building. Light clawed at them from
somewhere ahead.

There was a huge
rumble, then a thud that shook Ken’s teeth in his jaw. He fell into the side
of the narrow passage, leaning against what looked like a desktop that had been
thrown sideways and embedded in a wall of gravel. He kept his wounded hand
buried against his chest, but even the vibrations of the collapse that made it
through to his absent fingers wrung a cry from him.

He looked back at
Dorcas and Aaron. Aaron had his feet planted wide, his mangled hand clutched
to his chest but otherwise looking fine. Dorcas had fallen down.

“I think we left
that building just in time,” said Aaron as he helped Dorcas to her feet. Her
face tautened, but Aaron just looked like he was providing basic information:
it’s eighty degrees out, today’s a Tuesday, and… oh, yes, the world’s ending
and the building we were in just collapsed.

Ken turned back to Christopher.
The young man was making his way toward the light. “I’m not the Governor’s
son,” he said. “There is no governor. In case you hadn’t noticed, the United
States disappeared a few hours ago.”