This had happened before. Stuck in a plane with nothing but the dead, and the dead had risen up to attack Ken and his friends. That was when they lost one more of their number. That was when Dorcas stayed behind to give them a few critical seconds to escape.
Christopher had done the same; an action that now seemed less insane generosity and more insane penitence. Whether he had a hand in his baby’s death or not, Christopher believed himself guilty. And while evil men confronted by true guilt will spend the rest of their days proclaiming their innocence to the tops of the mountains, so good men faced with guilt they did nothing to earn will accept a sin in solemn silence and seek out every opportunity to make it right.
And when they couldn’t fix the underlying cause of the guilt, as Christopher could not, they would all-too-often seek penitence and absolution in insane offerings of self-sacrifice. They did not offer riches or indulgences, but rather sold their own safety, gave their own futures as ransom for the blame they had never earned but carried nonetheless.
Ken hadn’t been there for the things Christopher had – or hadn’t – done to save his child. But looking at him now he had no doubt that if anyone was wronged, it was the young man. He had been lied to, betrayed by his own family when he most needed them. His daughter stolen away. Dead – he thought – in the collapse that followed the Change.
So Christopher had stayed behind, had been willing to pay the ultimate price. Torn apart at the hands of the things that had once been dead and now moved again.
Movies that Ken had seen featured two kinds of zombies: the ones that were alive, if only on a technical level, and the ones who were the reanimated flesh of the dead. The former were humans infected by virus or voodoo, made into killers by nature or as an effect of human meddling. The latter were things that were brought to life by forces outside of human understanding.
The movies had gotten it wrong. And right.
Zombies were living humans infected with some strange disease. They came after you, to bite you and make of you the very thing that you most feared: a part of the protean organism that flowed across the face of the earth, a thing with billions of cells that had each once been autonomous creatures.
Zombies were also the dead brought to life. As the things nearby demonstrated all too clearly.
A man who ended below the knees was sitting up, ruined face looking back and forth as he maneuvered into a mockery of normal mobility.
A woman who had been torn in two via a gash that ran from her right clavicle down to her left hip bone was rolling ineffectively, trying to use her head and her right arm as anchors to get into place. To stand, to move.
A man who had his throat torn away, pulled out so completely that the gray-white of his spine could be seen in the back of the mangled mess, was slowly getting to his feet.
They were all breathing – or at least all pushing air in and out of their mouths – in time.
“We’ve gotta get outta here,” said The Redhead. She pointed at Liz and Hope, who were also breathing in time with the zombies. “Before they call ‘em down on us.”
Here was where the movies had gotten it wrong: it wasn’t a choice between live and undead. Zombies were real, and there were both.
Live infected…
… and undead cursed to live again.
Ken wondered for a moment how it was that the stories had come to life, how it was that something so blatantly impossible had taken a firm grip on reality and thrust itself into that once-closed system.
He wondered how the stories had started in the first place. He remembered a line from the animated version of Pinocchio: “All this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”
Was this not the first time the zombies had taken form in their world?
He also wondered how his daughters had a part in it. How they apparently controlled a piece of it.
As if irritated to be the subject of his thoughts, Liz and Hope stopped breathing.
So did the undead. The ones that could move enough to do so turned to orient on Ken and the other survivors.
“Run,” whispered The Redhead.
Then she said it again. Frighteningly loud in the sudden stillness.
“RUN!”
34
The zombies that had their genesis in death were slower than those born of bite wounds. Not much, but some.
Still, they were fast. Faster than a group of exhausted, crippled survivors.
Ken looked at Hope. She bounced in Buck’s arms. Limp, loose… and somehow connected to the maimed things that pulled themselves closer, closer.
Is she doing this?
Does she know?
Is she one of them?
It was this last that was most frightening. What if his daughter was no longer his daughter? What if she was one of the zombies, albeit one that was wearing a better mask of flesh, a more lifelike camouflage than the others?
What would he do then?
What should he do?
What could he do?
Buck was whispering something, wheezing the words through gritted teeth as he ran, holding onto Hope with one arm, pulling Ken with the other. “No Hope no Hope no Hope no Hope no….”