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.