Something hit the zombie in the face. A moment later, something hit Ken in the head.
He almost lost his grip on the elevator cable. Almost forgot where he was for a moment. He’d fallen out of a two-story building today, hit his head on a freeway abutment, and concussed himself Heaven-only-knew how many times. This last was nearly the straw that broke him.
He slid a few quick feet before the pain in his neck, the agony of metal cable fibers ripping at his throat, awoke him from the half-trance he had fallen into. His good hand clenched automatically and his fall arrested. He stopped.
What had happened?
Screams. Everyone – everything – was screaming.
The monsters. The survivors. Hope was shrieking, reaching downward as though for a fallen toy.
And he heard someone calling his name. “Ken! Ken, you okay?”
Dimly, he realized that it was Dorcas. That she must have seen the monster jumping at him and had slid down the cable and kicked it in the face before it could grab Hope away from him. Her other foot must have caught him in the head.
“Ken?”
“Yeah!” He snapped the word. Realized he was sounding ungrateful to a woman who had just saved his life and that of his child, and tried to soften his tone. Not easy when your daughter is screaming bloody murder and trying to throw herself to her death while monsters toss themselves at you from every direction. Still, he managed somehow. “Yes. I’m okay. Thanks.”
Her answer was typical Dorcas. Good-natured in a to-the-point sort of way. “You can thank me by getting your butt in gear.” She kicked at a falling zombie. The kick missed by a mile, but the motion seemed to make her feel better. It certainly made Ken feel better, knowing that the farm woman was as full of fight as ever and ready to protect him.
He started going down again. “Where’d Christopher go?” he called as he dropped. Trying to ignore the monsters, trying to ignore how weird it was to be having this conversation, or any conversation, under these circumstances.
Hope was still screaming. Still trying to jump away from him. He was finding it ever harder to hold onto her. What had happened to her?
“Beats me,” shouted Dorcas. “How much farther down?”
Ken tried to see below them. Darkness swallowed the shaft only a few yards under his feet. “I can’t tell.”
“I hope it’s soon.”
He didn’t like the tone of her voice. He looked up. Realizing at that instant that the things were no longer falling like screaming autumn leaves around them.
And he saw why Dorcas sounded worried. And why he should be worried, too.
47
Ken had observed how the things seemed to function better when they were with others like them. How when they were in ones and twos and threes they seemed somehow more awkward, less fluid. As though what had changed them had stolen not merely their ability to speak and reason, but to be alone.
As though they feared solitude.
So he had seen them grow stronger, more agile, when they were with others. He had seen the zombies cluster around one another and then crawl over and crush one another so that they could create ramps of themselves, so that they could reach higher and higher in search of their prey.
But he had never seen anything like this.
At first he wasn’t even sure what it was he was seeing.
Then he understood, and wished to God he could forget.
One of the things scampered across the wall of the elevator shaft to where a piece of exposed metal had thrust through the concrete. It was jagged and sharp-looking, but the zombie didn’t seem to care. It grabbed onto the metal and then just hung there.
Another zombie joined it a moment later. Running along the walls with that sickening plop-plop-plop as its fingers held, then let go, then held, then let go of the sheer surface of the shaft.
The second zombie crawled along the length of the metal spear, then onto the first beast’s head and shoulders. It wrapped its arms around the other’s chest, its legs around the legs of the first. Both the monstrosities were nearly bereft of skin, flayed by their entry into the shaft, their flesh torn away by the edges of the too-small rift in the concrete. It was impossible to tell if the creatures were women or men – they were only things, just masses of wet muscle and bone in the permanent night of the shaft.
Blood dripped off them in thick streams. It looked almost black. Ichorous. Ken couldn’t tell if that was a trick of the un-light of the shaft, or if their blood, like everything else about them, was changing.