“… my…,” the boy continued…
… the white/black abomination thrust its face toward Maggie’s leg…
“… MOTHER!” Derek finished, kicking off into space.
The zombie bit down.
28
The teeth sunk into flesh.
The world seemed to fall silent.
There was only wind. The sound of smoke puffing past. And a scream.
“NO!”
Ken didn’t know who screamed. If it was him, or Maggie, or someone else. It didn’t matter.
All that mattered was the sight of his boy. The sight of Derek, who had always been the one to take care of his sisters, who had always seemed more aware of others’ pain than of his own, putting himself between his mother and baby sister and the looming threat.
The sight of the beast biting the child’s arm.
The sight of Derek, looking up at the sky. His mouth opening.
And then sound returned as Derek screamed. Not in pain, but madness. His eyes clouded over, and everything that had made him so special was suddenly… just… gone. Gone, and he was one of them.
Bloody sweat exploded from the boy’s pores. His body convulsed with the change, and that bought them all some time. His hands and feet punched out, and his little foot caught the black/white demon under the chin. The thing growled and let go of Maggie to grab Derek… what had been Derek. To do so, the monster also let go of its hold on the crane.
Derek and the black/white beast fell, both of them snarling with rage, reaching for Maggie and Liz as they plummeted. They disappeared into the smoke that still billowed up from the base of the crane.
“They’re gone.”
Someone yanked at Ken. Christopher, he thought. But he couldn’t be sure. A weight fell on his shoulders. A crying something.
The voice came again. “They’re gone. Take care of your daughter.”
“Shhh,” said Ken. Not even sure why he was saying it. Part of him realized that Christopher had passed Hope to him, then had gone down to help Maggie and the others. But the greater part of him – the part of him that mattered – didn’t understand why he was saying it. Why he was doing anything.
“Get moving, dammit!”
Again, he thought that was Christopher. And again, he couldn’t be positive. Ken moved his feet mechanically, just as he kept whispering, “Shhh,” mechanically, and wasn’t even sure if he would have noticed if Hope stopped crying.
He couldn’t hear much. Just his son’s scream, “Not my MOMMY!”
Just his son’s next scream, the pain of being bitten and then the rage as he became what had bitten him.
And then the words, “He’s gone.” Over and over in Ken’s mind.
The crane listed again. Shuddering.
“Shhh,” he whispered. He kept crawling as the crane continued its mad tilt. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
And he did not care that he lied.
29
The sound of the crane continuing to tilt must have been at least as loud as it had been before, but Ken’s ears seemed to have been stuffed with cotton. He barely heard the noise. There wasn’t enough room in his mind to hear what was going on around him and also replay the images of recent past.
The thing that brought him back to the moment was a strange prickling in his stomach. The sensation was unnerving, one that he couldn’t place for a moment. Then he realized it was weightlessness, the feeling of his body hitting nearly zero-gravity as the crane dropped out from under him.
Then the massive apparatus stopped moving, arrested by some piece of the Wells Fargo Center, or by the jib hitting part of the high-rise across the street. Either way, Ken fell into the metal with bone-crushing force. Hope, still clinging to him, screamed even louder and he realized that she was relying on him. She would die if he didn’t get her out of here.
He clamped an arm tightly around her. Not as a rote motion, but like it mattered. He kissed her hair, surprised for some reason at how warm the top of her head was. She felt like she had been running around outside on a summer day.
Would there ever be such a thing again? Or had winter come to stay?
“I’m here,” he shouted. “Daddy’s here!”
“Daddy?” She screamed the word back, divided into equal parts terror, surprise, and faith. The monsters were here, but now Daddy was here, and he would save her.
Ken hoped her belief was less misplaced than Derek’s had been.
Forget about that. That’s not for now. Time for that later.
What if there is no later?
He climbed. He didn’t look down, didn’t look back. His wife was back there. Liz was with her. Dorcas and Christopher and Aaron, too.
But right now, the world – his whole world – was in his arms, and he had to climb away from the nightmare below. He held Hope, and she was fragile and bright, and he couldn’t lose her.