Ken followed his gaze.
More zombies clambered over the building’s roof. It was a four-story building, and they were scrambling over the top, climbing down the sheer face of the office structure. As soon as they were within thirty feet or so they would cast themselves down to earth. Broken bones would heal, torn flesh could be ignored.
All that mattered was the hunt. The prey.
A quick look to the other side of the road verified that more zombies skittered like roaches over the five-story building there. Climbing over and down.
Sally crouched, ready to pounce on the first zombie that came at the group, and Ken had no doubt the leopard would die for them – for the girls, in particular.
But he knew that even a predator like the big cat would quickly fall.
There was nowhere to go.
He looked at Aaron. The cowboy’s eyes were blank. Ken saw no plan there. Only death.
He looked at Maggie.
She held his hand.
It was not a hopeful gesture.
It was a goodbye.
25
The Redhead began running.
Not a surprise, Ken thought. Most people will run, even when running is a doomed course. Even when running means only that you will die tired.
What surprised him was that she ran east – toward the larger, closer horde.
They started growling, running faster. As though they were lovers meeting, coming together after a long absence.
Give up.
Give in.
He didn’t hear Derek in the growls, didn’t hear the peculiar strength of his once-son’s call. But he knew that The Redhead was doomed.
She turned her head without stopping. “Come on!”
“What?” shouted Maggie, not bothering to hide the shock from her voice. It was the sentiment they all felt.
To their left, the zombies clinging to the building were about to jump. Sally moved toward the base of the structure. Snarling. The zombies didn’t seem to care. They readied to leap.
Now The Redhead did stop, if only for a moment. She looked at a watch on her wrist, the kind that was coated in thick black rubber, probably shock-resistant, waterproof, and able to stop small grenades.
Then she looked up and said, “Come with me or die.”
Maggie looked at Ken. She had never been a wilting flower, the stereotypical deferential wife who asked for permission before doing things. But she was asking him now. So was Aaron, he realized, and Buck as well.
They were all waiting. Waiting on him.
Ken looked at The Redhead. She was already turning to run again.
He nodded.
Buck began running, pulling himself and Ken and Hope toward The Redhead.
Maggie ran beside them, hands clasped around the carrier that tied Liz to her.
Aaron yanked Christopher along.
They ran, for the first time, directly toward a horde.
26
Only a few steps into it, Ken realized that perhaps “run” wasn’t the best descriptor. Everyone in the original group of survivors was wounded: physically, mentally, emotionally, or a combination of the three.
The few – like Buck and Maggie – who were not healing from grievous physical injuries were carrying insensate children and had to balance speed with care. The rest hobbled along as best they could.
Only Sally was unharmed, and even he held back, threading lithely between everyone’s legs, holding a tight orbit around Ken’s daughters at all times.
The Redhead ran, then turned back, then ran again. It was as though she couldn’t decide whether to abandon them to an unkind fate, or save them for a worse one.
The gas mask she had been wearing hung around her neck now, jogging up and down and side to side like a macabre second face. It was strangely reminiscent of the thing that had attacked them in the bus, with its facial distortions and extending mandibulae.
Not a comforting thought: the monsters were, at their core, not inhuman, but from human. Something must have acted on the human race to make them all change like they had, but the fact remained that the basic building blocks of those changes had been present in humanity’s genetic brick and mortar. Torn down and rebuilt, but still the framework was ours, and the monsters were built in the image of their predecessors.
Ken looked at the gas mask and knew he was looking at a darkly distorted image of himself; and at an image of what he still might become. A monster, both less and more than what he now was.
The Redhead kept glancing behind them. Not looking at the horde that was there, but up. Like she was waiting for air support.
Ken realized he was hoping for just that. Call in the Air Force, send in the Marines!
But there was nothing. No chup-chup of Black Hawks with thousands of rounds per minute spitting out of side-mounted Vulcan cannons, no high-pitched whine of F-14s dropping napalm to incinerate the enemy.
Just the wind. The growl.