She jumped.
She screamed in mid-air. Not because of the jump – the crane tower was only a few short feet to the left of the window, an easy jump even with an unconscious toddler strapped to you. He didn’t even think it was because of the heights involved. They were on the ninth floor, easily one hundred and twenty-five feet above the ground. More. But that wasn’t the frightening thing.
Not frightening at all. Not compared to what was happening. Not compared to the thing that had caused the building to rumble.
Ken and Christopher went to the window next, both of them squeezing into the opening. He glanced at the young man, once the son of Idaho’s governor, now just another person running a series of wind sprints against the Grim Reaper himself.
The kid had settled Hope into a death-lock under one arm. Holding her so tightly she could barely move.
“Thank you,” Ken mouthed.
Christopher nodded.
Something shoved them from behind. A not-too-subtle reminder that the zombies were in the room. That Dorcas and Aaron needed to get out, too.
Something scraped behind them. There was a scream, what Ken guessed was the sound of someone shoving the remains of the conference table against two dozen surging zombies.
Ken and Christopher jumped.
They hit the crane’s tower with twin thuds. Ken was holding his son with his bad hand, the one that was missing two fingers. Agony speared up through his wrist and his arm. His other arm felt only marginally better, the impact making his shoulder feel like it was on the verge of twisting out of its socket.
“Daddy, I can hold on,” said Derek.
Ken looked at his son. The boy didn’t wait for an answer, just spun around Ken’s midsection like he was on the jungle gym at the playground. Then his hands went around Ken’s neck again. “Gotcha,” said his son. He could almost hear the kid smiling. “Don’t cry,” shouted Derek, and Ken realized his son was trying to cheer up Hope. “The man looks nice!”
“I don’t like it!” shrieked the little girl. “Who are they?”
Ken began climbing, and could tell from the vibrations in the steel that Christopher was doing the same. He looked up and saw Maggie scaling the tower right above him.
Buck and his mother were nowhere to be seen. He didn’t know if they had fallen or were just far ahead. He didn’t care, either.
Twin thuds. Twin tremors. Ken looked down and saw Dorcas and Aaron. Dorcas almost fell, screaming as she landed straight on her broken arm. Aaron threaded his own good arm through a crossbar and then grabbed her tank top. It stretched, almost tore.
Then Aaron grunted and yanked her back to the tower. They started to climb. Each of them one-handed.
Hope was still shrieking.
“It’s okay,” said Derek again.
“I don’t like it!” screamed Hope.
“The man looks nice!” shouted Derek.
“Not him, them!”
Don’t look, Derek, thought Ken. Don’t look down. Don’t look at what Hope is seeing.
But the boy did. Ken could tell he looked, because his son’s breath suddenly sped up.
He didn’t scream. Derek wasn’t a screamer, not unless his loved ones were hurt. But Ken knew his son was terrified.
Because he had seen what was coming for them.
22
Ken had noted that the things, the zombies, moved as if connected. Aware of one another. They seemed to be more complete when near others of their kind, to the point that when he and Dorcas had been surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of the things while on top of a storage building, he had thought they almost seemed like one single organism. Like each zombie wasn’t its own creature, but rather a single cell of a larger monster.
Now he saw that even more clearly. Looking down from over a hundred feet, watching as what looked like most of the population of Boise swarmed to the base of the Wells Fargo Center.
It had to be two hundred thousand of the things.
Nor did they stop at the bottom of the building. The tremors that the group had been feeling weren’t what it felt like when a coordinated horde of two hundred thousand zombies mobbed the base of the building. No, it was the feeling when they were climbing up the building.
Ken didn’t know how it was possible. But then, he didn’t know how the zombies could be producing acids that ate through wood, concrete, even steel. He didn’t know how they could be spinning webs. He didn’t know how beating their brains out could seem to simply enrage them. How the things could exist in the first place.
It was all impossible.
And there they were. Scaling the side of the Wells Fargo Center, screaming and growling, the sounds of their cries grinding into Ken’s mind, calling to him. It was harder and harder to keep climbing. He wanted to let go.