Sally leapt back into view. More blood poured from the wound on his side. He had lost an eye.
He didn’t seem to mind. He ran to Maggie and licked little Liz’s limp foot. He let Hope’s trailing hand fall across his back, then danced back silently to tangle with the undead behind.
More growling, a roar. Hissing.
Maggie was at the idling thresher. She put her hands on the guardrails that ran up either side of the steep ladder-stairs that led to the cab. Pulled herself in. The black man smiled tensely at her, as though even in the midst of a calamity certain niceties must be observed. Ken almost expected him to say, “This is your captain speaking.”
Next was Buck. Maggie shuffled over to give him space on the bench.
And that was it. The cab was full.
No room for anyone else.
The hissing increased.
Sally leapt forward and somehow managed to navigate the ladder.
“The hell is that?” shrieked the driver.
Ken heard Buck and Maggie start to explain, heard bits of “He’s with us,” and “He’s all right” before the huge bear-man – so big he dwarfed even Buck’s six-foot-plus frame – waved them to silence.
He looked over Ken’s head. Then at The Redhead.
“Move, Theresa, move!” he screamed. And there was genuine terror in his gaze.
Terror, but Ken wondered where they were supposed to move to.
41
The Redhead – hard to think about her as a Theresa – jumped onto the thresher, then clambered across the side of the cab as nimbly as Christopher might have done. She gestured to Aaron. “Get him inside!” She pointed at Christopher.
Aaron eyed the cab. “Where should I put him?”
“Anywhere you can fit him!”
Christopher threw off the cowboy’s arm almost angrily. He bounded up the ladder, slammed the cab door shut, and then climbed across the blood-slick outside of the vehicle until he was next to Theresa. He eyed her as though daring her to say something.
She looked almost admiringly at him. Nodded. Admitting his right to be there, Ken thought.
Ken was next. Aaron propelled him halfway up the ladder. Then the cowboy barely made it onto the bottom rung before the thresher leaped forward.
The blades churned again.
They were pointed the wrong direction, but Ken knew that it didn’t matter. This wasn’t an attack, it was an escape.
The things were still coming.
One of them put a hand on Aaron’s work boot. Aaron hooked his left arm – his bad arm – through the handrail. He spun and kicked. The undead thing’s head exploded in red and pink. The thing danced mindless madness, instant and infinite insanity gripping it. It didn’t let go of Aaron, though, and the cowboy was losing his grip.
Ken jumped down a step and aimed his own kick. He wasn’t as expert as Aaron, but all the years of martial arts held him in good stead and he got a good front kick in. Right over Aaron’s shoulder, straight into the thing’s own shoulder. It spun the undead around, tearing it free of Aaron. The monster, the dead thing, was nearly headless, but it somehow sensed it was near to other moving creatures, because it grabbed one of its once-sisters and began tearing huge chunks of flesh from the other undead.
The dead woman it was attacking didn’t even acknowledge it. She kept trying for the thresher as it slowly moved forward. The vehicle had been moving quickly when Ken first saw it, but apparently there had been a bit of momentum involved in its velocity. To get up speed it had to have time.
Not like the zombies. They ran fast from the Change. They killed quickly from the get-go.
The dead woman finally went down when the one Aaron and Ken had kicked ripped the back off her neck. It must have interrupted all signals from head to body because she fell and was still. Her fingers twitched.
Then feet.
She would rise again. Soon.
Ken looked for the next undead.
He kicked at one that was reaching for them. He connected, knocking the thing back. It went to one knee and the driver swerved at the same time. He was undoubtedly trying to miss something in the road, but it was almost a choreographed move. The huge tires of the thresher ground the zombie beneath them. It didn’t rise again. Ken couldn’t even see where it had been: just one more stain on a road filthy from the destruction of the past days.
Aaron was fighting off the things, good hand and both feet a blur. Efficient motions meant not to subdue or still, but to cripple and kill. The moves of a trained soldier.
Or assassin.
Ken glanced at Christopher and Theresa. The redheaded woman was holding to a horizontal bracket on the side of the thresher’s cab. She was holding herself up out of reach of the undead, but every so often she would drop down and land a pair of heavy black boots in a forehead or face. Sometimes it triggered that jittering madness, other times not.