Something slammed into the substance beside Ken’s head. He looked over as it was drawn back.
It was Christopher. The kid had found a tall, cylindrical trash can somewhere and was ramming it into the yellowish wall. Pieces of the secretion came off in flakes, then chunks, then sheets.
“Shit.”
The word was whispered, but intense. Intense enough that it even managed to pull a grief-and terror-stricken father away from his single-minded task, if only for a moment.
Ken looked over his shoulder.
Whump. Whump. Whump. Christopher kept driving the trash can into the yellowed wall. A door began to emerge. Solid-looking, save for the glass window on the top where the words “Law Firm of Stacy Gomberg, Attorney At Law” could be vaguely made out, stenciled in gold lettering.
Whump. Whump.
Aaron and Dorcas had turned around. Facing behind them down the hall. Aaron still had his gun drawn, and had pulled the woman behind him in a gesture – useless – of protection.
The hall beyond the two was choked with zombies. All of them emitting that bizarre trill.
And walking toward them.
“Daddy!” screamed Derek from beyond the door. “Daddy, Mommy won’t wake up!”
11
Before, the things in the hall had seemed almost unaware of the survivors. Focused solely on rebuilding their wall of bodies, on the grisly task of shutting off this part of the building.
Now, though, all of them were clearly staring at Ken and his friends. The madness was there, the rage simmering behind half-shuttered eyes. Something held them in check, but he didn’t know what it was, or how long they would refrain from attacking.
And it didn’t matter. There had to be more than thirty of the things crowded into the hall just a few feet beyond Aaron and Dorcas. No escape if they attacked.
“Daddy!”
“I’m coming!”
Ken turned back to the door. Peeling back immense shards of the substance that the things had vomited forth. Yanking it away from the door like half-dried plaster. Some of it stuck to his fingers, gummed up under his nails, and he wondered if he would ever be able to scrub his hands hard enough or long enough to make them feel clean again. He suspected not.
He also wondered if the stuff could be toxic. It had to be getting into his bloodstream, through the still seeping stumps at the end of his left hand. What if it infected him?
What if he changed?
The thought was enough to make him pause for a second. But only a second. Only long enough to think of the few people he had seen bitten. They had changed instantly. Human one second, and something terribly different – both more and less – in the next.
So no. He wasn’t infected. He believed that. He had to believe that.
And there’s nothing I can do about it at this point.
He pulled away another flaky, leprous mass of the resin.
Behind it was the doorknob.
He touched it.
The trilling of the creatures behind him went up in volume. Expectant. Excited.
Hungry.
“Daddy?”
His boy’s voice sounded weaker. Terrified, anxious. Giving up.
Ken turned the knob.
12
Ken went to South America with his church group one summer. They visited six different countries in three months, twenty teenagers out to do good and three church leaders who – looking back – Ken was certain were mostly hoping no one died or ended up pregnant. Because sometimes achieving goodness ran a close second to the basic necessities of civilization.
Ken understood the trip was a great success. Houses were built. Wells were dug. Some lives were genuinely changed.
The things Ken mostly remembered, though, were the amazing case of diarrhea he picked up in Brazil, and the spiders that almost picked him up in Paraguay.
Paraguay, he understood from his reading, was basically a nothing place. The only landlocked country in South America. Lots of poverty. It had once been a technological and economic power of South America, and had even boasted the first steam-powered locomotive. But decades of political mismanagement had crushed the economy and the people, and over a century later that locomotive was still in use as basic transportation while other countries in South America were using diesel and electric trains.
Still, that made it perfect for a charity trip. Many people were in need. And a hundred dollars could feed a family for a month.
Ken went in with his friends. They built, they dug, they sweated in the hundred-degree-plus heat. They cowered from torrential rainstorms that came out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast as they had come.
And Ken made the mistake of going for a quick walk.
He just wanted to see what was in the foliage. Something had moved. He thought it might be a monkey – he had a strange desire to see a wild monkey – and followed the movement into the thick trees.