Another zombie pulled its way onto them. This one had once been a man, identifiable by the tattered remnants of a business suit and what looked like part of a tie thrown over its shoulder. The third zombie crawled onto its brother/sister things and, like the first, held tight.
Ken watched a fourth climb into the middle of the shaft and hold to the growth, then a fifth. The excrescence seemed to pulse as the zombies in the middle of the mass shifted slightly, the ones on the outside layers adjusted their grips. It was like watching a beating heart coming into being from nothing. An unholy vision of creatio ex nihilo.
“What are they doing?” said Dorcas. The woman’s voice was low; clearly she was speaking to herself.
But with the question came an answer. Ken looked at Hope. She was still reaching out. Reaching for the dark tumescence just above them. Reaching and now she was groaning, almost….
Ken’s blood ran cold.
She was almost growling.
And he knew what the things were doing.
“They’re building a bridge,” he said. “Building a bridge to the cable. To us.”
48
Ken felt… dark.
His wife and baby were somewhere below him. Below and unseen.
(Dark.)
His daughter was reaching out for the things that tried to kill them. Hands lifted up as though in praise or prayer.
(Darker.) His son was gone. Bitten. Changed. Dead.
(Darkest.) And then he realized with a start that the feeling wasn’t merely a mood, it was a reality. That the light in the vertical tunnel that had become a sudden deathtrap was fading once more.
He looked up.
The light wasn’t just fading. It was departing. Christopher was leaving them. Again.
What’s he doing?
The light dimmed to almost nothing. Almost. And perhaps complete nothingness would have been better. Would have been a gift. Because as it was Ken could see just enough to make out the glistening, pulsing mass that added to itself bit by bit, that reached out inch by inch, foot by foot.
How long until one of them reaches the cable?
How long until one of them reaches us?
The things worked in near-silence, not even trilling or growling anymore. There was only the moist sloughing of flesh on flesh, of raw muscle fibers sliding across one another as they gripped and clenched with strength that was just one more impossibility in a world where the impossible had come to snuff out the once-real.
And yet, though silent, still the things moved in preternatural harmony. As though each could not only see what the others needed, but read the others’ very thoughts.
Move, Ken. Move, dammit!
He knew that to stay would be to die. The things were reaching out. Grappling half-blindly in the ever-darkening stillness of the long coffin-shaft. Perhaps ten feet above where he and Hope and Dorcas hung, perhaps another seven or eight feet away from the cable. Only a few feet, only a few moments.
But he was frozen. Frozen by the sight of the monsters that were coming for him. By the things that were happening all around him. By his wounds. By his exhaustion, his hunger, his thirst.
Most of all by his daughter, his Hope, reaching for the beasts.
“Go.”
Ken didn’t know whether he was the one who said it, or if it was Dorcas urging him on. He didn’t know if it really mattered, either. He didn’t see how they could possibly outrace creatures willing to slice themselves to ribbons and able to stick to featureless walls.
Then he felt Hope’s heartbeat. She was reaching for the things above them. Reaching, growling, groaning, almost moaning in what sounded like pleasure.
But he felt her heartbeat. He remembered holding her for the first time. Barely bigger than his hand and still trailing the lifeline to her mother. Cupping her in his palm and feeling the hummingbird-pulse of her heart as she screamed at a new and terrifying world. Feeling the softness of her skin and whispering to her that he loved her and he would be her daddy forever and he would protect her because that was his job and that was what daddies did.
He couldn’t give up.
He began to lower himself again.
Looked down.
And stopped.
Another pulsing bridge of bodies had extended out over the emptiness just below them. This one even closer to the cable, the leading edge of the zombies just inches away from grabbing the thick tether.
There was nowhere for Ken and Dorcas and Hope to go.
They were trapped.
49
The things had been silent before.
Now, inches away from completing the span of flesh that would enable them to reach their prey, Ken could hear them again. Sniffling, grunting.
Growling. Always that same growl, that same wheezing noise that invited listeners to come to them. To give up. Give in.
To die.
He wanted to. Wanted to let go. To let it end.
Suspected it was already over. Even if he hadn’t accepted that fact yet.
Certainly Hope seemed to want the end. She strained for the things above them, reaching up like a supplicant at the many feet of a throbbing, wheezing god made flesh.