Renegades (4 page)

He left red streaks behind.  He knew he should feel it, should feel the pain of one more attack against an already overburdened system.  But he felt nothing.

“Derek!” he screamed.

“Daddy!”  The call came back even higher than before.  As though hearing his father’s voice had not provided peace, but rather an increase of terror.

“I’m coming!  I’m coming!”

But he didn’t know that.  He couldn’t get a purchase on the slick wall of waxy mucus left behind by the monsters that had God-knew-what planned for his children.

Whump
.

Something slammed into the substance beside Ken’s head.  He looked over as it was drawn back.

It was Christopher.  The kid had found a tall, cylindrical trash can somewhere and was ramming it into the yellowish wall.  Pieces of the secretion came off in flakes, then chunks, then sheets.

“Shit.”

The word was whispered, but intense.  Intense enough that it even managed to pull a grief- and terror-stricken father away from his single-minded task, if only for a moment.

Ken looked over his shoulder.

Whump
.
  Whump
. 
Whump
.  Christopher kept driving the trash can into the yellowed wall.  A door began to emerge.  Solid-looking, save for the glass window on the top where the words “Law Firm of Stacy Gomberg, Attorney At Law” could be vaguely made out, stenciled in gold lettering.

Whump.  Whump.

Aaron and Dorcas had turned around.  Facing behind them down the hall.  Aaron still had his gun drawn, and had pulled the woman behind him in a gesture – useless – of protection.

The hall beyond the two was choked with zombies.  All of them emitting that bizarre trill.

And walking toward them.

“Daddy!” screamed Derek from beyond the door.  “Daddy, Mommy won’t wake up!”

 
11

Before, the things in the hall had seemed almost unaware of the survivors.  Focused solely on rebuilding their wall of bodies, on the grisly task of shutting off this part of the building.

Now, though, all of them were clearly staring at Ken and his friends.  The madness was there, the rage simmering behind half-shuttered eyes.  Something held them in check, but he didn’t know what it was, or how long they would refrain from attacking.

And it didn’t matter.  There had to be more than thirty of the things crowded into the hall just a few feet beyond Aaron and Dorcas.  No escape if they attacked.

“Daddy!”

“I’m coming!”

Ken turned back to the door.  Peeling back immense shards of the substance that the things had vomited forth.  Yanking it away from the door like half-dried plaster.  Some of  it stuck to his fingers, gummed up under his nails, and he wondered if he would ever be able to scrub his hands hard enough or long enough to make them feel clean again.  He suspected not.

He also wondered if the stuff could be toxic.  It had to be getting into his bloodstream, through the still seeping stumps at the end of his left hand.  What if it infected him?

What if he changed?

The thought was enough to make him pause for a second.  But only a second.  Only long enough to think of the few people he had seen bitten.  They had changed instantly.  Human one second, and something terribly different – both more and less – in the next.

So no.  He wasn’t infected.  He believed that.  He
had
to believe that.

And there’s nothing I can do about it at this point
.

He pulled away another flaky, leprous mass of the resin.

Behind it was the doorknob.

He touched it.

The trilling of the creatures behind him went up in volume.  Expectant.  Excited.

Hungry.

“Daddy?”

His boy’s voice sounded weaker.  Terrified, anxious.  Giving up.

Ken turned the knob.

 
12

Ken went to South America with his church group one summer.  They visited six different countries in three months, twenty teenagers out to do good and three church leaders who – looking back – Ken was certain were mostly hoping no one died or ended up pregnant.  Because sometimes achieving goodness ran a close second to the basic necessities of civilization.

Ken understood the trip was a great success.  Houses were built.  Wells were dug.  Some lives were genuinely changed.

The things Ken mostly remembered, though, were the amazing case of diarrhea he picked up in Brazil, and the spiders that almost picked
him
up in Paraguay.

Paraguay, he understood from his reading, was basically a nothing place.  The only landlocked country in South America.  Lots of poverty.  It had once been a technological and economic power of South America, and had even boasted the first steam-powered locomotive.  But decades of political mismanagement had crushed the economy and the people, and over a century later that locomotive was still in use as basic transportation while other countries in South America were using diesel and electric trains.

Still, that made it perfect for a charity trip.  Many people were in need.  And a hundred dollars could feed a family for a month.

Ken went in with his friends.  They built, they dug, they sweated in the hundred-degree-plus heat.  They cowered from torrential rainstorms that came out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast as they had come.

And Ken made the mistake of going for a quick walk.

He just wanted to see what was in the foliage.  Something had moved.  He thought it might be a monkey – he had a strange desire to see a wild monkey – and followed the movement into the thick trees.

A moment later the sounds of his friends faded.  He barely noticed.  He was too entranced by the new world in which he had found himself.

It was sunset.  The pinkest light he had ever seen picked its way through broad leaves, piercing air so thick and wet it felt like he was swimming all the time.  He watched it set, not realizing he was walking toward it, not realizing he was following the setting sun like it was some sort of will-o’-the-wisp.

And then the spider dropped into view.

Not a big one.  Just a small thing, the size of Ken’s thumbnail, dark brown and curling around a filament that extended up into nothing.  But it was followed by another.

And another.

And another.

Ken looked around.  He saw more of the spiders.  Hundreds.  Thousands. 
Millions
.

He had somehow wandered into a web of a size greater than anything he had ever heard of.  It had to be thirty feet long, thirty feet high, thirty feet deep.  And every inch or two was another spider.

They seemed to be swarming toward him.

Ken screamed.  He dropped to his belly and did his best army crawl back the way he had come.  Shrieking back into the area where his friends were taking a Coke break and talking about quitting for the night.

They laughed at his story.  Until
they
saw the web.  Then they stopped laughing.

Their local guide shrugged.  He mumbled something in the local dialect, then told them in halting English that Ken was in no danger, the spiders made “happy tents” but left people alone.

Ken did not believe him.  He dreamed of spiders for weeks.

But he never thought he would see a web like it again.  Certainly not in the middle of a high-rise in downtown Boise.

He stepped into the room.  Silken strands brushed against his arm.

“Good hell,” said Christopher.  Ken didn’t look, but he was fairly sure the kid was referring to what was in front of them.

“Oh, shit,” said Dorcas.  Ken didn’t look at her, either, but he was fairly sure
she
was talking about what was behind them.

The zombies in the hall stopped trilling.  They started growling.

 
13

“RUN!” Aaron shouted.

Ken turned in time to see Dorcas and Aaron racing the last few yards to the attorney’s office.  Screaming in terror.  The three dozen monsters behind.  Aaron was pushing Dorcas, propelling her forward, faster, faster.

They ran into the room with Ken and Christopher.

And everything stopped.

Ken and Christopher were already motionless, held in a kind of mental stasis by what they had found in the room.  Aaron and Dorcas seemed to be affected equally, halting only inches into the new area.

And the zombies….

They stopped just outside the doorway.  Still snarling, still growling that awful growl.

One of them – the very same gray-suited thing that Ken and the others had first run into – reached out.  Ken felt like his skin was covered in ants, like it was trying to separate from his muscles and bones and leap to one side.  But he still couldn’t move.

Not with what was behind him.

And his son… Derek was silent.

The zombie reached out.

Reached out… and grabbed the door.  Swung it shut.  The lettering “Law Firm of Stacy Gomberg, Attorney At Law” – now backwards – could be seen once more.  So could dozens of shapes, dark forms leaning close.

One of the things – probably Gray-Suit – leaned in.  Even through the door, the sound of the gagging cough was enough to make Ken wish he was deaf.  The thing vomited, and something splashed against Stacy Gomberg, Esq.’s, office door.

More of the things clustered around the door.  All of them gagging, coughing.  Excreting.

“They’re sealing us in,” said Dorcas.

“Good times,” said Christopher.

Ken turned away from them both.  Because he heard Derek again.

Somewhere in the office.

Somewhere in the web.

Crying.

 
14

It was like looking for a dark ghost.  Not only because the sound was so weak and faraway, but because it came from the depths of the gray-white-black masses of webbing that coated everything in the office.

The office itself was fairly large; apparently Stacy Gomberg ran a successful firm.  There was a receptionist desk, a waiting area with chairs, an open central space with several doors leading to other offices.

At least, Ken thought that was the layout.  The silken threads that covered everything made the most basic observations little more than blind guesses.

Even the air was spun thick with threads, with strands that stretched from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall.  Ken saw the overhead fluorescent lights straining to illuminate the area, but the webbing seemed to be bouncing the photons back, rejecting the light itself.  The office was dingy, dark.  It felt like a prison.  A dungeon.  An oubliette on the ninth floor of a skyscraper.

Christopher shouted.  Ken looked over.  The younger man had stepped forward into the waiting area, and tripped over what looked like a thick mound of silk.  The webbing had sheared apart, though, revealing a white face.  Not a mound of silk, but a wrapped-over body.

Something hissed.  This time it was Aaron who screamed, the cowboy permitting a rare showing of emotion as something moved behind him.  What had been wall a moment before now shifted.

Not wall.  Not wall at all.

It was a zombie.  Encased in silk, spun into a cocoon-like shell.  Standing silently right behind Aaron.  Now it tore forth, ripping out of the threads that held it.

It went to the body that Christopher had revealed.  Leaned over.  Tore into its cheek and began to feed on it.

“Daddy, please help!”

Ken turned away.  For whatever reason, the zombie wasn’t bothering them.  He had a child calling him.

One thing at a time
.

He walked through the lobby area, shivering as the trails of silky material trailed over his bare skin.  He felt like vomiting.

“Derek,” he shouted, trying to keep his voice calm.  Strong.  And failing.  “Where are you?”

“In here,” said the voice.

Ken followed his son’s voice.  Derek still sounded hurt.  And in this world where so many new kinds of pain had recently erupted into being, Ken hesitated to think of what that might mean.

He passed several offices.  Barely glanced into them.  Still, it was enough to show him nightmare visions, silk-wrapped sheets of once-life.  Bulky objects that were once desks and bookshelves and filing cabinets and phones and people.

Some of the corpses had been ripped open and torn to pieces.

Others were still whole and unmoving in their cocoons.

Ken wondered what he would find when he finally located his son.  Derek had said his mother wasn’t moving.  So would Maggie be dead?  What about Hope?  What about the baby?

“Kiddo?” he said.  Soft footsteps behind him, the sounds of shoes treading lightly on carpet sheathed by an alien secretion.

“In here,” said the voice.

Ken found the office.

He saw his son.

 
15

It was the fifth office.  Not really an office, in fact – more of a conference room.  A large table sat in the middle, the kind of thing around which high-powered attorneys haggled over even higher-powered deals, or glared at one another while deposing white-collar criminals.  To one side of it, a long coffee table ran along the wall.  Beyond that, a couch sat along a back wall, underneath a square that could be a flat screen TV or framed art.  Impossible to tell, because everything was covered in the same sticky gobs of black and gray threads.

The monstrous excretions made everything look dirty and foul.  Even the light: they covered the windows on the far wall in thick drapery-like sheets, shrouding the room in a depressed twilight that weighed on the eyes and on the mind.

Derek was on the conference table.

At first Ken was sure that his son was hurt.  Nearly every inch of his skin was covered in webbing, but his face was still open to the air.  Still uncovered.  His eyes glistened with barely-contained terror.