From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (81 page)

“Sorry about
leaving you guys on the side up there, but I saw the floor looked like it was
collapsing, and figured if you were hanging out there as bait none of the
creeps would notice me sneaking in and dropping off a care package.”

Ken focused on Christopher.
The young man walked effortlessly, as though pulling himself through a wrecked
passage in the middle of a collapsed building was something he did every day.
Ken kept slipping and sliding in dust and wreckage. He could hear Dorcas doing
the same behind him, and even Aaron cursed under his breath every once in a
while.

“You
meant
for that to happen?” said Dorcas, breath huffing out between the words. “How’d
you learn to blow up buildings?”

Christopher laughed
sheepishly. “I didn’t mean
that
to happen. I figured I’d knock a hole
in the floor, knock back the creeps –”

“Zombies,” said Ken
without thinking.

“Huh?” said Christopher,
then nodded almost immediately. “Yeah, they are kind of zombie-esque, I
guess. Anyway, the building coming down was definitely outside the scope of my
plans.” He chuckled. “Still, dream big, right?”

Ken could see what
he assumed to be their exit ahead: a crack that seemed like it was hanging in
gray space. A moment later he followed Christopher out a rift in the side of
the ruined, sagging building. His fingers throbbed – strange, because they
weren’t there. Stranger still, he could feel his wedding ring, even though it
was clamped around his dismembered finger and wedged between stones in a
destroyed building far behind him. The ring wasn’t touching him, but it felt
too tight. It hurt. A lot.

His wedding ring
had never bothered him before. Not since the first moment that Maggie slipped
it on his finger. He always loved wearing it. But now it hurt.

He hoped that
wasn’t an omen.

The passageway
exited at a rickety metal stairwell midway up the slumped over pile of rubble
and junk that had been a fully functioning building only a few hours before.
Ken couldn’t tell if it the stairwell was a fire escape or simply metal stairs
to the second level businesses. It was bent and twisted, a blasted mockery of
itself. Black metal peeked out from a heavy layer of gray dust and dark soot
that coated this side of the structure.

Ken recognized this
area. They were facing south on 9th Street. He didn’t know how that was
possible, since he was sure they had been a block north of here. Either the rubble
they had climbed through had covered several blocks, or the top part of the One
Capital Center building through which they had escaped had lain at a strange
angle, so when they jumped off of it they were on a different block than he had
calculated.

Either way… he
looked to his right. And there it was. The Wells Fargo Center.

“So,” said Christopher,
reaching out a hand to help Dorcas onto the stairwell landing, “do you guys
have a plan or – hey!”

Ken barely heard
the last. Barely heard the others shouting for him to stop. All he could see
was the building where his family had been when this happened. All he could
hear was his wife calling him in his mind, his children crying out, screaming
for Daddy.

He forgot
everything but his family. Forgot the zombies, forgot the pain in his phantom
fingers and in the rest of his body. He forgot his new friends.

He ran down the
stairs and was on the street in the dust and smoke in seconds. The others were
racing after him, and he heard Christopher saying, “What’s going on? What’d I
miss?” over and over.

The street was
covered in debris and blood and bodies. But the bodies were of the normally
horrific variety. None of them were moving, they were dead and dead to stay –
at least, until the universe flipped on its axis again and once more rewrote
the rules of mortality.

No zombies. There
had been tens of thousands crowding up against the head of the One Capital
Center building. Where were they now?

It didn’t matter.
Maybe the shattering of the building had scared them off, maybe they had found
new prey, maybe they were late for a mass hairdresser’s appointment. Ken
didn’t care. All that he cared about was the clear sightline between him and
the Wells Fargo Center.

It was a little
more than a block away. It took him less than a minute to run it. The smoke
grew thicker as he approached, and he remembered what seemed a lifetime ago,
seeing something explode at the base of the huge crane next to the Wells Fargo
building, seeing the crane tilt sideways against the structure. He looked up
and saw the massive crane, almost at the corner of the building, leaning at an
angle against the northeast face.

He ran below it.
He could hear the metal creaking far above him.

Below him, he heard
something like dead leaves. He looked down and saw a thick blanket of
insects. All dead. Not bees, not what had attacked him and Dorcas before.
These looked like millions upon millions of ants.

He ran over the
dead bugs. He did not slip. Nor did he much care what had killed them. He
was too close to the end of his search to care.

The Wells Fargo
Center was shaped like a right triangle, and at the square of it there was an
entrance, a bank of glass doors. The middle two were revolving doors, and both
of them were grotesquely jammed shut, dead bodies tangled within them like
clots in the building’s ventricles.

On either side of
the revolving doors were simple hinged doors. One of them was whole, the other
had been knocked out and was only a metal frame holding nothing but air.

Ken ran for the
empty door. He didn’t care at that moment what dangers might lay beyond that
dark hole. Only that his family could be there. Must be there.

Sometimes, reckless
action was the only available substitute for hope.

The Wells Fargo Center
was one of Boise’s largest buildings. Wedge-shaped, eleven stories tall,
hundreds of offices. Ken had no thought of what to do beyond going to the
Wells Fargo branch office that he knew was in the far corner of the first
floor.

He ran into the
lobby, trying hard to convince himself that he was running this fast because he
was about to find his family. Trying hard to believe they had a chance at
life. Trying hard to believe it was excitement and not pure panic that was
driving his heart against his ribs in machine-gun bursts.

Failing in all of
those attempts.

Something buzzed.
The sound reminded him of the bees that had died as one while he and Dorcas
cowered in the car outside the CPA’s office. He dropped down, almost going to
hands and knees as though his body were determined to burrow right through the
floor if necessary to get away from another cloud of the things.

It was not bees. It
was an elevator. The doors slid halfway shut with a tired whirr before
stopping against the body of a man laying facedown half in and half out of the
elevator.

It registered on
Ken that there was still power in the building. How much longer that would
last, he had no way of knowing. The grid was failing in huge swathes, that
much was clear. And equally clear was that Idaho Power was not going to be
sending out teams to deal with power failures anytime soon. Perhaps ever.
Power fled from an area was power likely gone forever.

He heard feet
behind him. The others. They caught up to him now, easy enough since he was
no longer moving. Just standing. Just staring.

Not at the man.

Not at the
elevator, opening and closing and opening and closing with the restless action
of an ocean tide.

Not at the other
bodies that lay every few feet throughout the lobby and hall. Not even at the
ones who had been pulled viciously apart and whose innards painted the walls
like a grotesque mockery of Christmas garlanding.

“Ken?” Dorcas’
voice was soft. She sounded worried. “What is it?”

Ken didn’t answer.
He just walked to the elevator. Stopped in front of it.

Knelt down.

Ken was very much
of the opinion that mommies and daddies served very different purposes, and
nowhere was that more evident than when he and Maggie went to Babies “R” Us
looking for something for one of the kids. It didn’t matter if it was a
pacifier or a crib: Ken looked for the cheapest one. Maggie looked for the one
that had the highest safety ratings, preferably achieved while the product was
submerged in lit napalm in the middle of a nuclear reactor that was suffering a
core meltdown.

They usually came
down somewhere in the middle. Ken would remind Maggie that he didn’t have the
money to purchase the blanket that could also be used as a parachute in case of
forced landings during supersonic flight, and Maggie would remind Ken that
children were more important than things like having a nice TV or what the
neighbors thought of their car. Ken would shift his budget priorities, and
Maggie would eventually admit that having exceptionally-protected children
wouldn’t matter much if they didn’t have money for food while sitting in the
middle of a crib equipped with changing table attachment
and
capable of
warding off evil curses.

The stroller Ken
was kneeling beside, the one only inches from the bloody hands of the dead man
wedged half in the elevator, had been the subject of a particularly lengthy
compromise session. The school district had just informed Ken and the other teachers
that budget freezes would keep any raises “at current levels” (meaning nonexistent)
for the next two years, and he thought that baby Liz might just have to make do
with being Velcroed to a skateboard or something equally cost-effective.

Maggie did not care
for that concept.

They argued. Divorce
was out of the question – it was never an option, not ever – but he thought a
few nights on the couch loomed large in his future.

Eventually, Ken
caved in. Because he loved Maggie. Because he recognized that, yes, the
stroller was going to be used for years and should be a good one. Because he
hated sleeping on their second-hand couch.

The stroller became
the newest, nicest thing they owned.

Of course, that
didn’t last long. Babies had a way of casually destroying things. They had a
lot in common with earthquakes and rabid dogs that way. It wasn’t long before
the once-pristine light-green body and plaid seat became blotchy and stained.
Grimy beyond recovery, no matter how much Maggie washed and wiped.

Ken knew every spot
and stain. He knew where many had
come
from, and thought that was an
indicator he was a good dad. He cared enough to be there for the spills, to
try to help with the cleanup. Even when he wasn’t there, he noticed. He asked
about the stories, he found out what had happened. He wanted to know.

But now… he didn’t
know if knowing would be good for him. The old stains were still there, were
still familiar. But there was one more: a large, bloody handprint across the
back of the stroller’s chair.

Right where
two-year-old Liz’s head would have rested.

Keep it together
.

Liz was the first
baby he was able to enjoy. With Derek he was too terrified about screwing it
all up to properly revel in the experience of being a new father. With Hope he
was terrified anew – already projecting forward to her teen years and wondering
if he was equipped to deal with the contradictions inherent in protecting a
Princess and teaching a girl to be her own strong woman.

He finally settled
in and learned to have fun with Liz. With the little girl who smiled so wide.
Who growled and jumped on his back every chance she got. Who sat and watched
cartoons in a little chair he made her for her first birthday. Who fell asleep
in his arms the way none of the others had ever done.

And there was a
bloody print where her head had been.

Keep it
together, Ken
.

Blood.

Keep it
together.

That’s a lot of
blood.

Keep it –

They’re dead.

No.

Dead.

Not yet.

The baby, the
kids.

You don’t know –

Maggie.

NOT UNTIL YOU
SEE THEIR BODIES.

He realized he was
rocking back and forth, his arms clasped tight around each other. Dorcas’ hand
was on his shoulder.

“We should go,” she
said. Her voice was soft.

Ken nodded. He
looked at the tray that snapped into place across Liz’s lap. There were some
Goldfish crackers in the cup holder. Liz always tossed her sippy cups over
when Maggie put them in the cup holder, so that nook had become an impromptu
Goldfish sanctuary.

The orange crackers
were flecked with blood as well.

Ken stood.

Dorcas’ hand was
still on his shoulder. Aaron and Christopher waited a few paces away. They
both looked at their feet, like there might be comfort somewhere on the
blood-streaked floor, if only they could find it.

The elevator
whirred. Closing on the dead man. Opening again.

Whump.
Whirrrr.
Whump.
Whirrrr.
Whump.

Ken looked at the corpse.

Dorcas moved away,
as though giving him space to commune with the dead – both the ones whose
bodies were present and the ones whose bodies were not.

Ken stood still and
silent for a long moment. Then his face knotted, becoming a tight mass of
confusion.

He took a step.

“Where you going?”
said Christopher.

A moment later,
Dorcas said, “Ken?”

Ken didn’t answer
either of them. He didn’t dare. He just kept walking.