Ken looked at Aaron. The cowboy shook his head. Just an inch to the left, an inch to the right, but it was enough to communicate that whatever brakes had been holding the elevator aloft were giving out.
Christopher was groaning. A low, animal moan. Pain. But he didn’t stop pulling the doors.
Buck started pulling as well. Shouldered Ken aside and yanked on the doors.
Something inside the mechanism pinged.
The doors slid open a few inches.
Far enough to allow one of the zombies – one that had climbed down from the elevator, perhaps, or maybe one that had been looking through the building proper for them – to heave itself into the elevator.
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The thing lurched forward, and Ken saw Christopher fling himself back. He didn’t shout.
No one did.
It was as though the cab was no longer filled with the living, but with the dead. With ghosts who were only going through the motions of life, but stripped of all voice.
Buck didn’t move away.
He grabbed a hank of the zombie’s hair. Slammed the thing’s head sideways into the acid-heated elevator doors. Flesh bubbled and the zombie screamed.
Ken moved forward, not sure what he was going to do, but sure he couldn’t let the thing get into the cab. Sure he couldn’t let it bite Buck.
The elevator fell. Not a small drop this time. Probably ten feet. Everyone tumbled to the floor.
And still not a sound.
Not even when Buck managed to stand and Ken realized the big man was still holding onto the zombie’s hair. Still holding the thing’s snapping head at bay… even though the head was no longer attached to anything else. The body had been left behind, neatly decapitated by the ceiling as the elevator fell.
Buck held the head at arm’s length, his face almost comically disgusted. The zombie’s teeth opened and closed, its teeth clapping and gnashing. No sound came from its mouth.
Not breathing.
No heart.
As Ken watched, the stump of the neck started to froth. Bone and blood and muscle disappeared, sealed over by a waxy yellow substance that reminded him of the stuff the zombies had been secreting in the building where he found his family.
Before Derek died.
Don’t think that.
What the hell is HAPPENING?
The frothing stopped. The zombie’s eyes rolled around, looking from one person in the cab to another. It was still silent, but its teeth kept snapping.
Ken heard someone gag. Sounded like Maggie.
“Guys!”
Ken tore his eyes from the horrific, impossible vision of death that refused to die.
Christopher had stood up. Was staring at something. But before Ken could do more than glance at it, the coughing started again. From everywhere.
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Ken grabbed Maggie. She didn’t pull away from him this time, didn’t make any pretense of resistance. She was almost limp, like the sight of the thing that still spit and bit while held aloft by nothing more than Buck’s hand had burned out any resentment she held against Ken.
He shoved her toward Christopher. The younger man caught her and started moving Ken’s wife toward the gap in the elevator doors. Toward the gap in the outer doors that led to a dark floor beyond.
There was an offset between the level of the elevator and the level of the floor past it. Not only that, but the outer doors were only open about a foot and a half. Ken couldn’t tell what had opened them, but he wasn’t about to question one of the rare gifts received in all this. Still, the gap was only barely wide enough to allow his wife to exit, shimmying through with Liz at her chest, stepping up to get to the floor that was about a foot above the floor of the elevator.
And then she was gone. Disappeared in the darkness.
Ken turned around. “Dorcas!”
The older woman moved forward. She glanced at Aaron as though hesitant to leave without him. He nodded and gave her a swift shove.
She pushed her way through the gap as well.
Followed by Aaron.
Then Christopher.
Buck didn’t move through it all. Just stared at the head. He looked like the sight of it had frozen something in him, had sent his mind into a fractal freefall that would permit no escape.
“Buck.” Buck didn’t move.
Ken realized he shouldn’t have been able to see anything. Christopher was gone, and with him the light.
He looked up.
The entire ceiling was aglow. Bulging and curving. Acid ready to fall through not in a trickle or a stream, but in a torrent. A waterfall that would doom anyone inside the elevator.
“Buck, we have to go. Now!”
Buck didn’t seem to hear him. Ken tried pulling the big man. Nothing.
He moved to the gap. “Buck, please!” he called, but he couldn’t stay. Not any longer.
He stepped into the gap. Stepped through and up to the floor beyond. Halfway between worlds. Between one Hell and, perhaps, another.
But at least Maggie was waiting on the floor.
He stepped up. Leading with Hope. Half his body in the elevator. Half his body out.
And something grabbed his hair.
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