“No.”
“Then you wouldn’t know what to do with the gear anyway. So we’re good either way.”
The cowboy grabbed one of the cords and pulled it over to Ken. It didn’t have much give, and when the cowboy pulled it over Ken’s neck the steel cords bit into his skin.
“Ow!” Ken said.
Below him, the groans intensified. And now they sounded like they were even with him, too. Were they on the same floor?
“It’s better tight. It’ll tear your neck up, but better that than falling, right?” said Aaron. Ken nodded. “Now step over the cord. No,” said the cowboy as Ken clumsily complied, “with the other leg.” Ken adjusted. The groaning of the things was getting louder.
“They’re coming,” he said.
“Then move faster.” Aaron instructed him on how to wrap himself up in the cord until he was cinched in a tight curl of the steel cable. There was almost no play in it, and it bit painfully against his crotch and his neck.
“Now,” said Aaron. “Listen close. Step back. The cable’ll hold you. Hold on with your right hand – your good hand – onto the cable that’s between your legs. That’ll keep you from going down too fast. You can hold your girl with your left arm.”
“Okay.”
“Just remember – the heights are nothing to worry about. Falling never hurt anyone. Hitting the bottom is the problem. So don’t let go.”
Ken waited for more. Silence. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Aaron looked over. Then back at Ken. The cowboy’s face was pinched and nervous. “I’d appreciate it if you got a move on, son.”
Ken nodded. “Hold on, Hope.”
Hope’s arms tightened around his neck.
He suddenly remembered countless cartoons from his childhood, hearing animated animals say, “Look out for that first step, it’s a doooozie!”
He stepped back.
40
He held on tight. Tight to Hope. Tighter to the wrapped steel cables in his right hand. The fibers bit into his flesh, and he could feel the skin tearing away from his neck as he let himself fall down through the air.
Down through the darkness.
He wondered how far he should go. And answered the question as soon as he asked it of himself.
You go as far as you can, Ken. You go until you can’t go anymore.
He dropped into nothing. Looked up and saw he had already fallen farther than he thought. The light where Aaron and Christopher had been was nothing but a point above him. A star in the darkest night he had ever experienced.
There was nothing else. Nothing but black and the weight of his daughter against his chest and neck.
And the groans. The growls.
The zombies sounded like they were everywhere. They sounded like they were above, below.
They sounded like they were in the shaft.
“Daddy,” said Hope. Her voice was low. A whisper. As though she sensed danger’s propinquity, and even her child-mind knew that silence was critical.
“Shhh,” he said. Gentle. He didn’t want to scare her worse than she must already be. Worse than he was, for that matter.
Still dropping, still letting steel threads slide through his clenched hand. The cable was covered in some kind of thick grease, but even that wasn’t keeping friction from rubbing his skin raw. He felt like his hand was bleeding.
How far down?
As far as you can get.
He wanted to shout. To see if Maggie was near. But what if he was heard by… other things? What if his shouts drew danger rather than comfort?
He looked up. The light that had been a star was now just a hint, a dream of a memory. Then a black shape came between him and the memory and all light was gone.
He figured the dark thing must be Dorcas, lowering herself one-handed. Christopher and Aaron would be following her.
All the way down.
As far as we can get.
As far as we can go.
But he didn’t go any farther. He stopped.
Because he heard another sound. Another growl. And this time it wasn’t bouncing up from some unknown place below them. It wasn’t reverberating off broken walls, thrown to his ears by the acoustics of disaster.
No, it was here.
A moment later the sound came again. And with it the smell, the warm, rotten smell of one of the things.
Inside the shaft.
41
Ken couldn’t tell if the thing was on a ledge like the one that had circled the shaft behind the elevator doors above, or if it had found some piece of ladder to climb, or if it was just scaling the bare walls of the concrete tube the way the zombies had climbed the walls of the buildings outside.
Nor was there any indication how it had come to be in the elevator shaft in the first place. Maybe it was some hapless maintenance man, caught in here when the change came, converted to a mindless monster and stuck since that first instant. Then Ken realized if that was the case the others who had come this way already would have made some kind of noise of warning.