Genesis (17 page)

Ken saw
Dorcas
shift slightly, saw her getting ready to run, to make a break for the back of the bank and the safety of the vault.  Aaron put his free hand on her shoulder, and Ken saw the cowboy’s knuckles whiten as he silently urged
Dorcas
to stay put.

He also noticed that Aaron had his gun pointed at
Dorcas
’ back.  He wondered if that was accidental, or if the man planned to use one of his two remaining bullets on her before letting her be turned.

And who gets the other bullet?  The last bullet?

The tapping at the glass grew louder, hands and fists battering at the heavy windows.  The growling was a rippling, surging undertow, dragging Ken into a place where despair and death were the only possible outcomes – and became, in their way, the only welcome options.

He felt himself start to rise.  The power of the sound, of so many of the
things
made it impossible to do anything else.  His knees popped, and his left leg
twinged
, the pain from when he had twisted his back to avoid falling into a student in a hall only a few hours and a million years ago yanking him suddenly back into reality.

Had he really been about to stand up?  To
give
up?

Yes.

He fell back to the floor.  Almost to his belly.  Looked at
Dorcas
and Aaron. 
Dorcas
was gripping her broken arm, her face white and her jaw clenched.  Under other circumstances Ken would have guessed she was in pain, holding herself to abate the agony.  But now he suspected that she was
causing
the discomfort.  Using it to keep her grounded, to counteract the strangely hypnotic effect of the zombies’ shrieks.

And Aaron….  Aaron had his eyes closed.  Showing no outer signs of turmoil or stress.  He almost seemed to be napping.

The noises of a thousand hands slamming the windows ceased.  It didn’t peter off, didn’t dissipate,
just
suddenly stopped as the zombies moved away as one.  Off to the next target.  To the next victim.

Ken started to peek over the counter.  But a motion caught his eye.  Aaron, gesturing for him to wait.  He did.  A moment later, Aaron nodded, and Ken looked over the countertop.  Just in time to see a last zombie ambling away.

He glanced at Aaron.

How had the cowboy known?

No one moved for a full five minutes after the things were gone.  Then
Dorcas
stopped pressing her broken arm, and exhaled explosively.  She wiped at tears that were streaming down her cheeks.

“We should go,” she said.

“You still want to?” asked Aaron.  Ken got the feeling the cowboy wasn’t asking him – just
Dorcas
.  Like the other man had decided that Ken was skirting the edges of
Crazytown
.

Aaron’s sticking around for
Dorcas
.  Not for me
.

He wondered what would happen if
Dorcas
said she
didn’t
want to go.  If he’d have the strength to keep going toward his family.

Toward the center of town.

Wouldn’t it be better – smarter – to run?  To get out of the urban center?  To go somewhere with fewer people… fewer zombies?

Dorcas
nodded, “Let’s go find his family.”

And that answered that.  She was still a virtual stranger.  Ken knew almost nothing about her.  But she had rescued him, and was willing to risk herself to rescue his loved ones.

For a moment, standing on the brink of the end of the world, on the edge of a doom greater than any he had ever imagined possible, Ken felt like things would work out.

Then he stood.  Got a good look at the windows.  Red handprints smeared across them from top to bottom.  Light filtering through them in splashes of scarlet that made it seem as though the interior of the bank was awash in blood.

“You guys ready?” he asked.  His voice came out husky, the tone of a man struggling to hang on to hope.

Sounds beside him, the gentle whispers of a man and woman standing.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They stepped outside.

Ken led the way.  The entry to the bank, like the entry to most places of business in this part of the world, consisted of an interior set of doors and an exterior set.  The typical setup for extreme cold weather, allowing for an “airlock” of sorts where people could shuffle off their winter snow, snap their wet umbrellas, and shift into the warmer interior.

Ken felt fine going through the interior doors.  He pushed them open and stepped into the small anteroom.  Aaron and
Dorcas
stepped in with him.  The interior doors shut behind them.

He felt trapped.

Claustrophobia gripped him in a way that he had never before experienced.  He was in a huge glass bowl, one that allowed a floor to ceiling view of him on two sides.  Nowhere to hide.  If one of the hordes came by, or even a few individual zombies….

He wanted to run back into the bank.  Wanted to hide in the vault until this all ended.  Even if the end that came was his death.

He remembered the feeling of despair that came when he called on the cell phone.  The need to give up that he felt when the zombies screamed.  Was this part of that?  A residual effect that would eventually fade?

He hoped so.

He doubted it.

Ken realized he was standing still.  Frozen by panic, an easy target.

Move, dammit
.

He couldn’t.

He thought of Maggie’s face.  Of Derek’s lopsided grin.  Of the silly faces Hope made whenever she posed for a camera.  Of Liz’s burbling baby laugh.

Will I find them alive?

He grabbed the outer door.  Swung it open.

He didn’t step out.  Just listened.

No screaming.  No cries of pain.  No growling.

No sound of thunder.

He nodded over his shoulder at
Dorcas
and Aaron.  They joined him on the street.  Aaron still had one hand on
Dorcas
’ shoulder, still had the other curled around his silver Magnum.  The hammer was cocked.

The street was empty.

Smoke filled the space between the buildings.  Car alarms could be heard pealing their shrill cries up and down the city.  None on this street.

Ken spared a quick glance at the car next to the bank.  The one the zombies had swarmed around.  It was a blue Nissan sedan.  The windows had been knocked out, and dents dipped sharply into the car’s frame every few inches.

Ken wondered what the hands that had done this looked like.  He hoped they were mangled and useless; that they weren’t possessed of some strange healing faculties.

The interior of the car was empty.  Shards of glass littered the seats, a parking permit for one of the local neighborhoods hung from the rearview mirror.

A single thumbprint of blood on the beige dashboard.

Ken moved away from it.

The bank they had hid in was on the corner of 12th and Idaho.  The Wells Fargo Center was on 9th and Main.  Only about four blocks away.

A lifetime.

He began to walk.  Staying in the shadows as much as he could.  Not easy to do.  Much of this part of the city block was devoted to parking lots for the local business.  The lots were choked with cars, many of them on fire, and Ken had to keep crossing and re-crossing the street, Aaron and
Dorcas
close behind, to find buildings to walk beside.

Plus, it was almost three o’clock and the sun was high overhead.  What shadows were cast by buildings and the few trees that had not been plowed under by runaway vehicles were thin and held close to the objects that cast them.  And all were rendered weak by the ever-present gloom of the smoke that hung a pall over everything.

Besides, he didn’t know if the zombies saw the same way he did.  Maybe they saw
better
in shadows.  Maybe they saw heat waves, or pheromones.

Still, it made him feel better to hug the buildings. 
Dorcas
and Aaron did the same.

One of the problems with any city is the feeling of disconnection.  It’s a fact of life: you can’t see more than a block in any direction when you’re standing among buildings that reach into the sky.  Boise was smaller than most big cities – only about two hundred thousand people, about a dozen real high rise buildings – but it was big enough to provide that same feeling of disorientation.  That strange sensation of being right next to something that could be
anything
.

That was why it was such a surprise when Ken came across the rubble.  Huge pieces of concrete, some of it so white it seemed to gleam in the sunlight, other pieces gray and ashen.  He couldn’t figure out where they had come from.

Dorcas
figured it out first.  She sobbed, a cry of anguish that exploded out of her.  “It’s the One Capital Center,” she managed.

Ken gaped.  That was impossible.  The One Capital Center was still a block and a half away.

He began picking his way between the pieces of rubble.  Some of it had sheared through other buildings on either side of the street.

He saw a shoe.  Didn’t look closer.  Didn’t want to see.

He walked around a huge piece of glass and steel and concrete, a chunk the size of an elevator.

And stopped dead in his tracks.

The street was blocked.

No, not blocked. 
Gone
.

And
Dorcas
was right.  The rubble they had been walking through was definitely the remains of the One Capital Center.  Ken could tell, because he was looking at what appeared to be the top three floors of that building.

It was as though someone had sliced off the top of the One Capital Center, an almost perfect cross-section, and carefully positioned it a full block away from where it should be.  The floors were laid across Idaho Street, sagging across the middle of the road, hanging on the buildings on either side.  The bottom level – what Ken guessed had once been the twelfth floor – sagged low enough almost to touch the road.  Every window had burst, and he could see right into the offices that had once been an everyday part of life a block over and some two hundred feet higher.

Almost as incredible, the buildings to either side of the displaced building had been crushed into rubble.  Not a single door or window could be made out, not a single storefront could be discerned.  Just two uniform mountains of debris, one on each side of Idaho Street, which glittered eerily as minute bits of glass caught what light penetrated the smoke and other particulates in the air.

“What could have –”
  Aaron’s
voice almost echoed in the space created between the buildings on three sides.  Even the ever-present bleating of car alarms was quieter here, as though reverencing the dark miracle of this event.

“Must’ve been one of the jets,” said Ken.

“An airliner wouldn’t do this,” said Aaron.  “Maybe make a building fall down, but not blow its top like this.”

“Maybe one of the stealth fighters,” said Ken.  He was whispering.  They all were.  Praying in a chapel of the damned and the dead.

“Stealth fighters?”  Aaron sounded surprised.  “There aren’t any stealth fighters stationed near here.  Not even at the Mountain Home base.”

Ken shrugged.  “Maybe not, but I saw two flying over the city when this…” he waved a hand, encapsulating the nightmare they had found themselves living, “… all started.  One crashed into the other.”

Aaron pursed his lips, thinking, and Ken wondered again about this cowboy.  “Maybe,” said Aaron.  “Depends on the payload, but maybe.”  Then he looked around.  Shrugged as if deciding the question was academic.  “We should get moving,” he said quietly.  He stepped toward the sagging rubble before them.

Dorcas
pulled back.  “Shouldn’t we go around?” she said.

Aaron shook his head.  “Can’t,” he said, as calmly as though discussing which route to take to the movies, which kind of cereal to buy at the store.  “We’re trapped here.  No exit.  Gotta go forward.”

“Why can’t we go back?” said Ken.

And then he heard the thunder.