Renegades (15 page)

Ken had run ahead to avoid being hit by a snowball, in fact, when he saw the wolf.  He ran around a sharp curve in the trail and saw the beast.  It wasn’t doing anything.  Just standing there.  Its fur was black with white spots, its muzzle streaked with flecks of froth and blood.

Ken froze.  The wolf didn’t seem to notice him at first.  It was biting its own leg.  Then it spun around three times, chasing not its tail but nothing at all.

Mrs. Prescott came around the corner next.  The wolf noticed Ken now.  It growled, drawing its muzzle back to show teeth so long and sharp that Ken thought he was going to faint dead away.

The wolf jumped at him.  And Mrs. Prescott proved to be not only strong, but a believer in concealed carry laws.  She pulled a gun out from under her jacket and pulled the trigger and put a single shot right through the wolf’s right cheek.

The wolf flopped at Ken’s feet.  He screamed and cried.  Mrs. Prescott held him and rocked him and told the other Den Mother – Ken could never remember her name – to take the boys back to the cars while she waited next to the wolf’s body until someone could call in the shot and get the thing hauled off for testing.

Ken didn’t go back to scouts much after that.  But he remembered the look in the wolf’s eyes when it jumped.  That mad, lost look.

And that was what he was seeing in Aaron.  Pain and a need to do the irrational that was so deep-seated it became sublime.

The cowboy rammed himself into the wall.  Again and again.  Then began rubbing the left side of his body against the wall, writhing against it like he was trying out for a job as the world’s worst exotic dancer.

And still screaming.

“He’s changing,” said Christopher, shrinking away from Aaron.

Then Aaron charged at Ken.

63

Ken was still on the floor, still half-pinned by Buck’s larger form.  He couldn’t move couldn’t move
couldn’t move
.

And even if he
had
been able to move… where would he have gone?

They were all stuck.  Trapped.

Aaron rushed across the elevator.  It was large, perhaps a freight elevator.  Something used to haul up large furniture or machinery.  Things the building management wouldn’t want the tenants to see on a regular basis.

Thank goodness, at least we’ll die discretely.

Not a huge consolation.  Ken had a second to remember Aaron wading into a stairwell full of zombies – and somehow emerging with only a few broken fingers – before the cowboy’s deadly hands reached for him.

He shouted.  Tried to scramble away.

“Ken!” screamed Maggie.

“Don’t!” yelled Dorcas.

Aaron ignored them both.  Smoke seemed to be pouring from his body, transforming him into a monster.

Buck lurched.  “Leave them alone,” said the man.  His voice cracked.  But he tried to get between Aaron and Ken.  Or maybe between Aaron and Hope, who was suddenly silent.

Either way, Aaron smashed a fist into Buck’s chin, sending the big man rolling into the elevator doors, crashing into Maggie’s legs.  He lay there and coughed and spat blood.

Aaron grabbed Ken.

Ken tried to get his hands up.  He had fought before.  He had taken martial arts his entire life.  He should be able to do something.  Anything.

He made a fist.

Aaron slapped his balled-up hand away.

Punched his throat.

And suddenly, Ken couldn’t breathe.

64

This is how you die.  The world doesn’t explode.  The monsters don’t kill you.  It’s a crazy cowboy karate-chopping your throat
.

The thoughts bounced around in Ken’s head like BBs in a blender.  He felt like he was overheating.  Could practically
hear
himself overheating.

But that was wrong, wasn’t it?

Shouldn’t he be going numb?

Shouldn’t he be dying… faster?

He realized Aaron was shaking him.  Yelling.  Not screaming, not shrieking.  Yelling.  Words.

“Stop trying to hit me, ya crazy kid!”

And Ken realized that he was still pummeling at Aaron with his good hand, still had his bad hand wrapped as much as possible around Hope, pinning her to him.  She was silent, head down on his chest like she was looking forward to hearing the last beats of his heart.

Aaron batted Ken’s hand away again, and his face screwed up in a scowl.  “Quit it or I’ll crack you in the throat again.”

That penetrated the fog that had invaded Ken’s brain.  He also realized he was breathing.  Not dead at all.  Somehow alive, somehow still breathing.

His throat hurt like hell.

“Why’d you….”  His voice sounded like a combination of rusty nails and chunks of dirt.  He hacked.  Tried again.  “Why’d you hit me.”

“’Cause you weren’t gonna move and I didn’t have time to chat.”

Aaron looked up.  Then down.

Ken followed his gaze.  Gulped.  “Thank you,” he said.  His voice came out as a murmur, and this time it had nothing to do with his bruised vocal cords.  “Thank you.”

“Welcome.”  Aaron looked again at the hole where the acid had eaten through the ceiling, and the matching hole in the floor where Ken’s head had been a moment before.  “Don’t imagine you’d have liked that.”

“I thought….”  Ken coughed.  The sound was louder than he expected.  He realized it was silent in the cab.  “I thought you were changing.”

“Why would you think
that
?”  Aaron seemed torn between amusement and offense.

“You went all crazy.”

Aaron showed him his left arm.  A long line of black, charred flesh ran from his shoulder to his elbow.  “Some of that goo hit me.  Just a drop, and it did this.”  He shuddered.  “Never felt anything like that.  And I been through some things.”

The elevator pitched again, falling a few inches.

“We can’t stay here,” Dorcas whispered.

“How do we get out?” said Christopher.  The two of them were in the far corner, nearly holding one another as though they had taken refuge in each other’s arms when Aaron had gone crazy.

“The doors won’t open.  They’re stuck,” said Buck, rolling over and clutching his nose.  Blood streamed from his fingers and spattered the floor.

Ken realized something in that instant.

He had thought before that it was silent in the car.  He was wrong.  It wasn’t silent in the car.  It was silent
outside
.

In the next moment, Hope sighed.  Ken looked at his daughter.  She was grinning in a way he had never seen.  An old smile, the smile not of an innocent child, but of someone who has seen far too many things that are far too dark.

She
winked.

And outside the car, several coughs sounded.

Acid sizzled.  Not randomly, but directly above Buck’s head, above Dorcas and Christopher, above Ken and Aaron.

The things outside had found a way to target them.

65

Everyone moved.

Ken tried to roll away.  Got tangled in himself.  He heard the
sssss-hissss
of acid above him.

Feet pounded on the floor.

He grunted.  Rolled on his bad hand.  The stumps of his missing fingers scraped on the floor.  He almost screamed, but something stopped him.  He bit his tongue and the inside of his cheek.  The new pain drew his mind away from the red bloom of agony centered at the stumps of his missing fingers.

Hope was still smiling.  Grinning.

How do they know where we are?

The thought entered his mind that they knew because Hope was here.  That they knew because
she
knew.

She was wrapped in that crap for hours.

What if they did something to her?

What if they changed her somehow?  Made her one of them?  A spy?  What if they see whatever she sees?

No.  That’s impossible
.

Of course, everything else that had happened in these hours was impossible as well.  Why not one more thing?

And the answer was simple: if the things knew everything they were doing, then there was no hope of escape.  So that
couldn’t
be the answer.  Because it would be a useless answer.  And Ken wouldn’t accept a solution that ended with his family and the rest of the survivors – the rest of
humanity
– doomed.

So no.  Not some kind of telepathy.

What else?

He tried to get to his feet.  Hope’s weight on his chest, her body dragging at the belt that cinched them both together, pulled him off-center.  He almost fell again.  His good hand went down on the floor.  Fingers plunged into nothing.

There was a hole there.

Something grabbed his fingers.

He pulled them back, terror wringing a curse from his lips.  The things were underneath.  Waiting for someone to put a hand through the floor, perhaps?  Just waiting to bite?

What would happen if someone changed in here?

The answer was a nightmare movie that played out quickly in his mind.

He realized the others were screaming as they moved away from the acid that hissed through the ceiling.  Realized that everyone was making noise.  Too much noise to think.

Buck’s foot went through a hole in the floor.  He yelled and yanked it out, and Ken saw fingers clutching at the man’s heel.

Maggie cried out in terror.

Dorcas hollered as Christopher was almost splattered by a stream of acid that fell from above, then splashed against a wall that hissed and started to dissolve.

Smoke.

Coughing.

Screaming.

Too much noise.

Can’t think.

Too much
.

And Ken suddenly understood.

The elevator fell another three inches.  More.

Screams.

He didn’t know if they would have enough time to get out.  The things outside were too many and too heavy.  The brakes must be shot.

They were going to fall.

66

“Shut up!”

Ken’s shout worked, though probably more because they were surprised at the outburst than because of any inherent power in his still-gravelly voice.  Everyone fell silent.  Trying to split glances between him, the sizzling ceiling tiles, and the spots that were gradually opening in the floor.

He gestured them to move toward the center of the cab.  Finger over his lips.

It had been silent.

Hope
had been silent.

She had been cooing and calling on the cables.  And even in the elevator for a few moments.

Then she stopped.

Why?

And Ken had thought that it was quiet for a moment in the cab, but he was wrong.  It had been quiet
outside
.  The things, the growling, snuffling, snarling things, had been
silent
.

He remembered the ones that bounded over the bridge of their fellows.  The ones with eyes covered.  Blind, but not falling.

Chirping.

And the acid falling from the ceiling.  Vomited forth after each of them screamed, or spoke.

They were
listening
.  The monsters were hearing.  Targeting them like sub-killers looking for U-boats.  Dropping acid instead of depth charges, but the idea was the same.

Silence was salvation.

Ken pulled everyone together.

The sizzle-spit-crackle of burning acid was the only sound.

The elevator cracked.  Plunged a full foot.  Christopher inhaled, and Ken wondered if the young man was going to scream and kill them all.

Dorcas slammed her hand over his mouth.  She nodded at Ken.  She understood.

They stood in a tight circle.

Waiting.

The elevator creaked around them.

What now?

67

Hope was staring at him.

Liz still dangled from the carrier on Maggie’s chest.  Ken wondered if it was better this way.  He didn’t know if he would be able to deal with it if she opened her eyes and stared at him with that same knowing gaze, or gave him the same grin that Hope kept turning on him.

He looked away from her.  Back at Maggie.  Her eyes flitted to his eyes, then away, to his eyes, then away.  Not looking at anything else, but not able to face him for long, either.

We’re in trouble
.

He knew it wasn’t just the elevator, either.  Wasn’t just now.  It was Derek.  It was losing their son.

He was the father.  He was the protector.  The one thing he was supposed to do was keep his family alive.

And he had failed.

He turned to the front of the elevator.  More to avoid having to look at Maggie than for any concrete reason, but as he turned he thought of something.

They’re not smart.

Yes, they are.

But not smarter than us.

He went to the doors.  Careful to avoid putting his foot through the hole that Buck had nearly plunged his own leg through a moment before.  The doors were open a quarter-inch.  Enough to wedge his fingertips between.  No more.  He pulled with his good hand.

No give.

He cast his eyes at Buck.  The big man was gazing at him with an “I told you so” look, large arms crossed over his chest.

Ken nodded for him to join him at the front of the cab.  Buck hesitated as though deciding how much of a fuss to put up.  Then he seemed to remember they were all in this together.

He came to Ken’s side.  “They won’t move.”  He whispered the words.

Ken looked up.  Waited for a cough.  For acid to rain on them.  Nothing.

He looked back at Buck.  “Pull them,” he whispered.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Just do it.”

Buck sighed.  He couldn’t fit his fingers in the crack.  Just lay the bloody pads of his fingers against the edges of the door and began scrabbling.

Ken took a deep breath.