Read Renegades Online

Authors: Michaelbrent Collings

Tags: #zombies, #post-apocalyptic, #apocalypse, #armageddon

Renegades (5 page)

BOOK: Renegades
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“Mommy,” said the boy.  “Save Mommy, save Hope, save Liz!”  He started crying, tears that he had clearly been containing – perhaps for hours – spilling out over his cheeks.

The depth of the boy’s pain nearly brought Ken up short.  So did the realization that Derek probably wasn’t hurt at all.  That the pain Ken had heard in his son’s voice wasn’t his own, but merely the pain he felt for his loved ones.  Derek had always been that way.  Had always been more apt to cry for others than for himself.

One time Derek accidentally knocked Hope into a tree while the two were riding their bikes.  Hope cried.  Derek
screamed
, terrified he had hurt her.  And even when she stopped crying, he went into the house and couldn’t be coaxed back onto his bike for days.

“They won’t move,” he whimpered now.  “They won’t move, they won’t move!”

Ken looked at his son.  Followed Derek’s gaze.

Ken’s breath caught in his throat.  He saw Maggie’s face, her eyes closed.  Her form pinned against what looked like a filing cabinet, anchored there by millions upon millions of silken strands.  Liz’s face seemed to sprout from Maggie’s chest, like she was giving birth to the two-year-old in a particularly gruesome way.  But it was just an illusion, the little girl glued directly to her mother’s chest by the same webbing that covered everything else.

Hope was next to them.  Another caterpillar.  Her beautiful, dark hair stark against her too-pale skin.  Hope had always been tan.  She had inherited her coloring from Ken’s dad.  But now she looked like a ghost of herself.  A specter.

Was she dead?

“Daddy,” whimpered Derek.  “Daddy, wake them up.”

Ken looked at the others.  Everyone else had crammed into the doorway of the office, as though leery to join him in this strange place.  As though peering into a mass grave.

He locked eyes with Christopher, the only member of their party who still had use of both hands.  “Can you get this crap off my son?” he said.

Christopher nodded.  He stepped into the office, and Aaron and Dorcas stepped in with him as though afraid to be too far away from the rest of the group.

Ken thought he saw movement outside the office.  But he didn’t have time to stop and digest that fact.

He turned to the still-unmoving forms of Maggie, Hope, and little Liz.

He reached out for them.

A sound stopped him.  Stopped all of them.

“What about
us
?”

The voice was nasally.  Old.  The voice of someone who was not only accustomed to complaining, but who enjoyed it.  Perhaps
reveled
in it.  Ken turned quickly.  On the other side of the table, laying under the windows, he saw two more cocoons.  Adult-sized, a man and an old woman.  The woman – the clear owner of the voice – was staring at him angrily, as though all this was Ken’s fault.

“You going to help
us
?” she demanded.  “My son and me’ve been laying here for hours.  Just laying here, mind you.  Not saying anything, not making any trouble.  Just laying here.  But I guess we’re not good enough to help.”

The man beside her – her son, Ken supposed – remained silent.  But he didn’t look patient.  He looked petulant.  Taciturn.

Dorcas moved into the room.  She almost slipped on the webbing that coated the floor, but caught herself on the table, moving around toward the pair under the window.  “We’ll help you,” she told them.

“About time,” said the old woman.

There was a tearing sound.  The shearing noise of threads being torn apart.  Ken saw Christopher pulling the first strands away from Derek.  Freeing his son.  His boy.

And that was when everything exploded.

 
16

 

 

The walls, the ceilings.  It had all seemed so thick with the spun fibrils.  So coarsely coated with the threads.

Now Ken saw through the open door of the conference room that there was more hiding beyond the sticky masses than just wood and tile and plaster.  Much more.

Zombies.  As though the sound of his son being torn loose had awoken them from a slumber, they erupted from dozens of hiding spots in the web-coated walls and ceilings, ripping free of the sacs where they had rested for some unknown purpose.

In an instant the deserted office suite was filled with dozens of the things.  They growled, the same as the zombies that Ken and the others had been dealing with until now.  The sound punched out, slammed at Ken’s mind and soul.  Crying at him to give up.  To join them.

Derek screamed.  The scream was as bad as anything Ken had yet experienced.

One or two of the things coming at them had bristly growths on their faces.  Tumorous excrescences, with thick hairs, about the size of quarters.  Dark and easily visible even at a distance.

What the hell are
those
?

Not important, Ken.  Move!

Then his view was cut off as Aaron slammed the conference door shut.  There was a lock and a deadbolt on this side.  The cowboy engaged both.  “Get your family moving,” he said.  Calm.  Always calm.  But his face was pinched, and he stood by the door, ready for the things to get through.

And they
would
get through.

Ken didn’t have to be told twice.  Christopher turned back to tearing the strands from around little Derek’s form.  Dorcas started shredding the moist threads that bound the old woman and her son beyond the conference table.

Ken knelt down and felt Maggie’s throat.  He had to dig under some of the webbing to get to the hollow where her pulse could be found.  The strands were sticky and moist.  Sickening.

Her heart was beating.  He checked Hope.  Liz.

Both alive.

“Maggie,” he said.  Then shouted.  “Maggie!”  She didn’t move.

Something pushed his leg.  It was Derek.  The boy was lurching against him.  He seemed to be moving oddly.  Uncoordinated.  Ken didn’t know if that was because he’d been motionless for hours, or because the webbing had a narcotic or numbing effect.  Either way, it took Derek several attempts to grab his mother’s face.

“Mommy,” he shouted.  “Mommy, wake up!”

“Move,” said Dorcas.  She yanked the kid out of the way, and Ken saw that she had found a bottle of water somewhere.  He looked over and saw that Christopher had taken over her position, pulling the last webbing away from the old lady and her son.  They were a dour pair, both dressed in shredded business attire, both gray of hair and countenance.  Neither helped him pull the webbing away, they just waited for the young man to do the work, like he was a servant.

The conference room door started pounding, almost
bouncing
against its frame.  It was a solid door, with a steel frame and perhaps even a steel core if the law firm was particularly security-minded.  But how long would it last?

Dorcas unscrewed the water bottle she had found, wincing as she used her bad hand for the movement, then tossed some against Maggie’s face.

Maggie’s eyes fluttered.  Dorcas repeated the movement, this time drenching Hope and the baby as well.

Hope sniffled.  Started making noises.  Maggie coughed.

“Maggie?” said Ken.

The door started crackling.  The growling on the other side of it got louder.

Christopher moved next to Ken and started tearing the three girls loose from their bindings.

Maggie opened her eyes fully.  They moved in circles, unfocused.  Unseeing.  He wondered what had been done to her.  Wondered if she would wake up as his wife.

A moment later she saw him.  Smiled.

“Ken?”

He smiled back.  “She’s awake,” he said to no one in particular.  Then spun as though to announce it to the world.  “She’s awake!”

No one seemed to share his excitement.  He couldn’t blame them.  The door was shaking in its frame.  Cracking and shimmying.  Then he heard one of the zombies outside the door cough.  There was a wet
blat
, muffled but audible even through the thick office door.

The door started to smoke.  A hole appeared in the wood, eaten through by the acid the things were now producing.  An eye could be seen, enraged and insane.

It seemed to focus on Ken.

The things shrieked.

More coughs.

More smoke.

They were coming in.

 
17

 

 

“Help me!”  Ken started yanking more of the thick, gooey threads from his wife and children.  Hope woke up as he did so.  More when Dorcas emptied the rest of the water bottle on the six-year-old’s head.

Little Liz did not wake up.  Her head lolled forward, limp and boneless-seeming.  Her blonde curls plastered against her neck and her sheet-white forehead.

She was alive, Ken
knew
she was alive.  Because she had to be alive.  He couldn’t have done so much, suffered so much, to find his family less than whole.

What would he do without his baby?

She’s alive, Ken.

But she’s not waking up.

“What’s going on?”  Maggie’s voice was slurred.  Drifting on tides of whatever drug had been administered to her and the other girls.  Ken slapped her face.  Not hard, but not particularly lightly, either.  It probably hurt him worse than it did her, but they didn’t have time for her to wake up gracefully.

The door was rattling harder.  Smoke filtered into the room, prickling Ken’s nostrils.  It smelled like vinegar and gunpowder: the smell of the acid these things made.

“Daddy?”  Derek looked terrified.  Staring at the shaking door, at the snapping teeth that were pressing through the cracks, one of the things crushing itself against the tiny opening so hard that the sharp edges of the wood were flaying the skin away from its skull.  Blood flowed.

The thing coughed, and more black acid spewed.  Aaron barely managed to get out of the way, the acid landing where his feet had just been and eating a hole right through the floor.

The things outside the office starting shrieking.  Not growling, not trilling.  Screaming.  A new sound, one that Ken had not yet heard.  Anger and alarm.

Ken touched Derek briefly on the shoulder.  It was all he had time for.  “You’ll be okay,” he said.

“I’m not worried about me,” said Derek.  The kid was staring at his sisters and mother.  Looking far too old for his age.

What are we going to do?

Hope coughed.  “Mommy?” she said.  Six years old, her voice was normally high and beautiful, but now it was thick and muddled.  She looked around and Ken could tell she didn’t know where she was or what was happening.

“Ken, what’s going on?”  Maggie was sitting forward, pulling away from the last bits of webbing that had bound her.  Little Liz hung from her chest still, but Ken saw that it wasn’t just webbing that had fastened them together: the toddler hung from a front-facing baby carrier that Maggie must have slipped on sometime after abandoning the stroller in the building lobby.  Technically Liz was probably a bit too big for the sling, but Ken supposed that government safety guidelines were out the window for now.  Certainly it would have let Maggie move faster and not have to worry so much about keeping hold of the two-year-old on top of the two other kids.

It was a miracle they were alive.

Chut
.  Another gout of acid hit the floor somewhere behind him.

“Guys, we gotta come up with something.”  Christopher sounded like he was about to panic.

Ken wanted to join him.  Wanted to just start screaming.  But he didn’t.  He couldn’t afford to do that.  He was a father, a
daddy
, and daddies didn’t have the luxury of giving into panic.  Not if they wanted their children to stay alive.

He helped Maggie to her feet.  “I don’t have time to explain,” he said.

She looked over his shoulder.  Saw the creature that had peeled most of the skin off its face to get in.  Saw the other things behind
it
, clambering to get through the rapidly-deteriorating door.  She went pale, and gasped, and he knew her well enough to see the scream in her gaze, the shriek that wanted to come out.

She held her hands in front of her.  Cupping them around Liz’s still-unmoving form.  And she didn’t scream.  Mommies can’t afford the luxury of panic any more than daddies can.

“What do we do?” Maggie said.  She helped Hope to her feet.  The little girl was listless, confused.  A far cry from the bright, perpetually smiling child she had been the last time Ken saw her.

“Daddy, can I help?” said Derek.

Whump
.

Ken looked over and saw that Aaron had grabbed one end of the coffee table, Dorcas the other.  They battered it into the face of the zombie that was pushing itself through the door like a hideous mockery of birth.  The thing screamed and coughed again.  The coffee table fell in half almost instantly, the soft wood succumbing to the acid.  But underneath the zombie was now writhing and shrieking as the acid it had expelled ate into its own flesh as well.

Smoke filled the room.

The things outside the office were still screaming their mad, enraged scream.

And a shudder rocked the building.  It felt like an earthquake.

Only there
were
no earthquakes in Idaho.

 

18

 

 

“What was that?” shouted Dorcas.

“Hell if I know,” said Aaron.  Soft-spoken as usual, though his words seemed a bit more clipped right now.  He picked up one of the pieces of the broken coffee table with his good hand.  Dipped it in the fizzling pool of acid that was eating a hole in the web-coated floor nearby, then slammed it through the widening slit in the door.

The wood punched right through the chest of the half-melted zombie on the other side of the door.  The thing shrieked, but other than that didn’t even seem to register the attack.  It kept thrashing wildly, madly, pushing ever farther through the door, ever farther into the room.

Ken looked at his son.  Derek was staring at him with that look that was reserved for superheroes and daddies: that look that said, “You’ll save us.  I know it.”

BOOK: Renegades
8.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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