Renegades (14 page)

Then he dropped down and disappeared into the black square.

60

Ken’s feet started moving the second he heard Buck say Maggie was in the elevator.  It didn’t even occur to him that the man might be lying.  Not until he was bent over the darkness, looking down and wondering what the best way would be to get in.

Alive.  She’s alive.

He sat on the edge of the hatchway, dangling his legs into darkness.  Even knowing Mags was down there, it made his skin crawl to see himself disappear so suddenly and completely.

We’re all going to die.

Unless we give up.

Give in
.

Ken realized that he was hearing the growling from the things above.  That his thoughts were somehow being coopted by the zombies’ hypnotic howls and rumbles.  But it didn’t matter.

He didn’t want to go down there.  Not into the darker dark.  Not now.

Give up
.

He felt something warm at his cheek.  Hope had laid her head on his chest, looking up at him – or at the things coming down the cable – and she was moaning, her breath warm on his face.  An unnerving smile on her small features.  She looked sad and hungry and hopeful and gleeful and afraid all at once.

“Dammit.”

Ken saw Aaron kick something over the side of the elevator.  A twitching thing that could have been an arm or a leg and that in any just and right world should not have moved at all.  The cowboy turned to look at Dorcas, who was staring at him.

“Buck was right.  Nowhere else to go.”

“I don’t want to –“ Dorcas began.

Aaron shook his head.  Looked up, then grabbed her around the shoulders and hustled her the few steps across the top of the elevator.

“We don’t have a choice.”

Give up.

Give in.

Give up.

Give in.

The elevator shook as Christopher touched down.

Ken pushed himself off the edge of the hatchway.  He fell into darkness once more.  Landed and took a stumbling step away, thinking dimly that he had to get out of the way before the others came in.

He was right.  He barely moved out of the way before another black figure came into the cab.  The form didn’t fall, but was lowered by one arm.  Dorcas.

Aaron followed, jumping easily to the floor, his cowboy boots thudding as he landed.

Only Christopher left.  And as the young man started to lower himself in Ken realized:

Who would close the escape door?  It wouldn’t do much good to run in here and then leave a clear opening for the things to follow.

“Wait –“ he began.

Too late.

Christopher dropped in with a grunt.  A thick clunk followed him almost instantly: the sound of metal clacking against metal, of wood and plastic bouncing up and then settling down again just as fast.

He pulled it shut.  He pulled the hatch shut
.

Ken didn’t feel like rejoicing, though.  Because the things that were following the young man had already shown an ability to get through doors.  What about closed hatches?

Was it even locked?

Christopher landed in a crouch, still holding Buck’s LED light.  He straightened and turned around quickly, illuminating the other survivors.

And Ken finally saw Maggie.  She stood beside the closed doors of the elevator, leaning over and around the still-slumped form of Liz.  The toddler’s skin looked pale and waxy, and Ken feared the worst.  Then he saw a thin stream of spit spill out of his baby’s mouth, catching the light for an instant before it broke off and hit the floor.

He’d never been so happy to see one of his children drooling.  Because the dead didn’t produce saliva, did they?

“Maggie,” he said.  He supposed he should have shouted it, should have screamed it and leaped across the cab to her.  But the word was barely a whisper, and he didn’t move at all.

He was afraid she wasn’t real.

He was afraid he was seeing, not a woman, but a memory.  A hope of something gone.

Maggie turned her head.  She didn’t look happy to see him; barely looked at him at all.  She looked at Buck.  “It won’t open,” she said.

“Maggie.”  This time he said it a little louder.  He managed to take a step toward her, and reached for her.

“
Don’t touch me
.”  She didn’t scream.  A scream would have been better.  A scream would have splashed all over the inside of the elevator, would have hit everything and everyone and maybe spread some of the venom around.  Instead, the words seemed to hit Ken square in the face.  He felt like he’d been punched, or like someone had taken a hammer to the bridge of his nose.

Total silence reigned.  No one seemed to breathe, as though all that had come before was merely a precursor, a curtain call to this main event.

Ken knew what was happening.  You didn’t stay happily married for as long as he had without understanding your spouse.  You didn’t understand your spouse without seeing the things they loved.  And you didn’t see the things they loved without understanding their deepest fears.

She had seen Derek fall.

She had seen Derek change.

And it didn’t matter that it hadn’t been Ken’s fault.  That there was nothing he could have done.  That Derek had done it himself in a stunning display of selfless courage.  She couldn’t blame Derek for what had happened.  You didn’t blame the hero for the loss.  And the girls… too young to bear responsibility for what happened to Derek.

So that left Ken.

He wondered for a moment if his marriage was over.  If the Armageddon that had killed so much of the world had also murdered his marriage.  And wondered if that would render his life worthless.  So much of who he now was began with the words husband and father.

What if half of that was gone?

Maggie’s face was phasing through a series of emotions, none of them good.  Distrust, anger, confusion, fear, sorrow.  All of them seeming like sharp knives cast directly at him.

Then Maggie seemed to notice Hope.  The little girl was still keening.  Almost singing wordlessly from her perch on Ken’s chest.  Reaching toward the ceiling, staring up with fever-bright eyes that did not notice or did not care to see her mother only a few short feet away.

“What’s wrong with her?” Maggie said.  It was almost a whimper, the venom gone from her voice as fast as it had come.  Now there was only fear.  Terror that bit as deeply and painfully as had the hate.

“I don’t know.”  His words sounded empty.  Sounded like the worst kind of lie: the truth of helpless despair.

Give up.

Give in
.

Ken stepped toward Maggie.  He felt like if he could hold her, could even touch her hand, they could fix this.  They could get through this.

He knew they could survive as long as the family remained.  Derek was gone, but they could endure.  The family could ride out the storm.

Something hit the top of the elevator.  Then something else.  Then the whole cab shook as what sounded like a hundred feet pounded across the ceiling.

A moment later, the strange sucking noises Ken had heard before oozed their way into the elevator, and thumps and thuds resounded through the walls of the suspended cage that had become their world.

And then noises came through the floor.

The things were crawling on the walls.  Everywhere.  Above, below, around them.

Something coughed outside the elevator.  A gagging, choking noise that made Ken’s hackles rise, because he knew what it meant.

Smoke started seeping in through one of the corners of the elevator where the back wall met the ceiling.

Something else coughed.  More smoke, this time coming from the floor.

“They’re gonna burn their way in,” said Dorcas.

“Or just burn
us
,” said Christopher.

61

Buck was on the door in an instant.  “Move!” he yelled.  He shoved Maggie out of the way, and Ken saw Liz’s head snap to the side as his wife was pushed with her oh-so-precious cargo.

“Hey!” shouted Ken.  He jumped at Buck.  Not really knowing what he was going to do, only knowing that the man had lain hands on his wife, had bounced his baby girl around like she was less important than a sack of flour.

He thought he might be able to kill the man.  He wondered for an instant if the only monsters were the ones outside the elevator.

The floor lurched.  Not just a little, either.  Ken’s feet almost went out from under him as the world suddenly tilted to the right, to the left.  Then dropped a good six inches.

Screams.  Everyone in the elevator seemed to be hollering at once, either in panic or trying to stop others
from
panicking.

“We’re gonna fall!”  Christopher.

“Oh, Jesus, please!”  Dorcas.

“Someone help me get this damn door open!”  Buck.

“Kenny!”  Maggie.

“Everyone
shut up
!”  Aaron.

And his voice did it.  He was standing in the back corner of the elevator, the only one who seemed to be unaffected by the sudden jouncing.  “The elevator won’t fall.”

“What if the cable breaks?”  Buck again.  He was scrabbling at the doors with his fingers, and Ken could see dark streaks on the burnished metal.  Blood.  The man had already broken his skin and nails, clawing at a door that wouldn’t open.

We’re going to die here
.

“The cable don’t matter,” said Aaron.  “There’s electromagnetic brakes on the rails.”

Buck hesitated for a moment in his panic-scratching.  Turned and stared at Aaron in amazement, as though he had just found the blue-ribbon winner in the idiot contest.  “Electromagnets don’t work when the power’s out, you
dumb shit
.”

Aaron’s jaw clenched.  In a low voice he said, “The electromagnets keep the brakes
open
.  So when the power goes out, they clamp down.  No power, no falling.”  He took a step toward Buck.  “And you need to calm down or I will calm you down.  Forcefully.”

Buck looked like he was going to rise to the threat, but instead he doubled over in a coughing fit.  Smoke had saturated the elevator cab.  Ken’s eyes were watering, and the light in Christopher’s hand was being dampened by a greasy yellow-gray smog.

Buck straightened.  “Don’t…” (coughing) “… tell me to….”

He couldn’t finish.

Ken saw something.  He didn’t recognize it at first.  And then recognized it, but couldn’t believe it.

He had seen the zombies vomiting acid.  The bilious stuff was black and thick, a tarry fluid that melted through metal and concrete and wood with equal ease.

But that was what he had seen in the light of day.

Here, in the gloom of the dark and smoke-filled cab, Ken saw a dot of light on the ceiling, a purplish glint that reminded him of the black lights the DJs used for some of the high school dances –

(
Only there’s no more high school, there’s no more
world
, for crying out loud
.)

– or at some of the clubs he and Maggie used to go to.  Smoke roiled around it, and a low sizzling skittered through the cab.  The acid glowed.  It burned, both inside and outside.  But the light it brought was cold.  Cold light that burned.  Beautiful color that would kill.

The sight of it made discordant bells go off in Ken’s head.

The glowing drop of acid finished searing its way through the ceiling tiles.  It rolled into a ball and began to elongate, an oval pearl extending into the cab right above Buck’s head.

Ken grabbed the big man and yanked him over.  Hope squealed as she was pancaked between the two of them, but Ken didn’t have time to worry about whether he had frightened her, or if she was even reacting to this or to some other, unseen stimulus.

“What the hell are –“  Buck fell on top of Ken, but stopped speaking when he saw the acid fall to the floor and start sizzling through the spot where he had been standing.

Everyone moved instinctively to the sides of the cab.

Ken cast his eyes around.  Looking for Maggie.  Caught her glance, saw the terror in her eyes.

The car lurched again.  He wondered how many of the things were on the walls and ceiling of the elevator, how many were clinging below the floor.  How many would it hold?  Surely the brakes would have to give out eventually.

So would they fall to their deaths?

Be asphyxiated by the smoke?

Or be burnt by the acid?

He looked at Buck.  The man was shaking.  “The doors won’t open,” the big man said.  He sounded like he wanted to add the words, “I want my mommy.”  Instead he simply repeated, “The doors won’t open.”

And Ken saw more acid – not a drop this time but a stream – gathering on a crack in the ceiling directly above him.

62

A scream pulled Ken’s attention away from the beading string of glowing liquid above him.

It was Aaron.  Not just screaming now, but shrieking.  And coming from the unflappable cowboy the sound was nearly as out of place as the sight of the disembodied hand that had gripped Ken’s leg earlier.

Still howling, Aaron shook his left arm, then slammed into the wall of the elevator, not seeming to mind that he hit his dislocated and broken fingers into the wall.

Ken had seen a rabid animal once.  A wolf.  He was eleven, hiking a trail near Caldwell with his Webelos Scout den.  It was late fall, and an early snow had already fallen.  Some of the parents wanted to cancel the hike, but the Den Mother, a woman named Mrs. Prescott who Ken remembered as being lanky and so strong she could probably bench press God, had successfully argued that the drive to Caldwell would probably be the most dangerous part of the trip.

She was mostly right.  The hike was nice.  Snow frosted the evergreens that anchored the edges of the trail, but little of it was on the trail itself.  The scouts were bundled up in layers of clothes and most had thermoses of hot chocolate in their coats.  It was fun.  Just enough snow to make a snowball from time to time, not enough to make it miserable.