Echoes of Darkness (5 page)

He
hated
that old man.

More of the walking dead filled the parking lot, some older and more decrepit, unable to do more than shamble, others simply staggering in from farther away, but all of them joined the throng gathered beneath him, the only sounds their shuffling feet and champing, biting, gnashing teeth.

He hoisted his legs higher, clumsily holding the crooks of his knees with his hands when his thighs and abdomen grew tired. Groping hands flailed beneath him. One and then another of the fetid, rotting paws slapped the triangle depending from his ankle, setting him spinning faster.

He was just thanking Fate the things were too far gone to make the connection and grab the dinner bell, when one of the grasping hands went through the triangle as it circled above the crowd. The bony, greening wrist caught in one of the corners and the creature jerked mindlessly downward, simply trying to free itself. The string about his boot yanked his knees free of his grasp, stretching his leg downward. He stopped spinning, leg extended, the binding rope cutting cruelly into his torso as the creature below him, the remains of a woman, threw its full weight against the triangle.

The boy screamed in pain. The string snapped.

A hand slapped his lowered ankle, catching it in a grip like steel, though when he looked down the fingers clutching his boot were swollen, puffy-looking as rising bread dough. The boy couldn’t tell which of the upturned faces the hideous hand belonged to; there was no change in any of the blank eyes, no break in the rhythm of a single set of champing teeth.

The hand began to pull.

The boy screamed again, pain ringing his torso, his knee burning like fire. More hands reached for him as he was stretched, his tortured limb pulled down toward their hungry grasp, and his scream turned into a howl of hatred and rage.

“Old maaaaaaaannnnnnn!”

A head exploded beneath him as a shot rang out across the lot. The gripping hand fell away with a jerk that sent him swinging, spinning once more above the crowd of dead faces and hands. The sudden fast spin coupled with the blast of stench from the burst head were finally too much for him: he vomited, raining effluvia down upon the hungry mob. They took no notice, eyes remaining open, teeth still chattering in anticipation of feasting on his flesh as the crowd surged back and forth, following his swinging form with mindless determination.

They also took no notice of the gunshots, round after round slamming home in the mob. Head after head disintegrated in gouts of meat and liquid rot, bone and brain spattering the surrounding blank faces. Several of the zombies fell, tripping on the remains of their brethren or slipping in the chunky gore now covering the tarmac. The fallen were trampled, unnoticed by those still standing, some of the older ones reduced to dragging themselves through the mess when arms and legs, brittle with their slowed decomposition, snapped beneath the horde’s marching feet.

None dragged themselves far before the bullets found them, reducing them to inanimate bags of meat and muck.

The boy was sick again as this went on, the stink of the carnage burrowing its way into his sinuses, his stomach clenching like a painful fist long after it was emptied. The two- or three-dozen zombies below became a dozen, then little more than a half-dozen, shuffling tirelessly after him as his writhing maintained his back-and-forth swing. Each time his spinning brought them into view he watched them come, hating them in their mindless, unstoppable determination to have him, almost as much as he hated the old man for putting him here.

“Your turn!”

The voice startled him, so focused was he on his silent, stumbling pursuers. He craned his neck, trying to find the old man, but what with all the swinging and spinning it was impossible to make him out.

“Watch your landing, boy—you’ll have to be quick on your feet.”

He was swinging away from the following crowd when the rope went suddenly slack. He hit the ground boots first, dropping and rolling not so much by plan as that his legs simply gave out. Had he not already purged himself empty, rolling on the filth-covered blacktop would have made him sick; as it was he rolled clumsily to his feet, fighting to strip off the rope as he staggered away from the footsteps so close behind.

“Here you go!”

Motion caught his eye as he flipped the loops up and over his head with arms half-numb from their tight bondage. One object, then another, arced through the air to land in a clear spot by the edge of the gas station’s cement pump-pad.

A revolver.

A machete.

Dead fingers brushed his collar as he momentarily lost track of his pursuers. He spun away from the grasping, reaching horror, trying not to focus overmuch on the wood-on-wood sound of the thing’s teeth clacking in a grotesque parody of chewing. He ran, circling around the pad, leading the pack, the bandleader in a parade from Hell. They had him in sight, were fixed on him now; they would not stop, he knew, but would keep on coming until destroyed. He looped back, an all-out sprint putting a little distance between himself and the pack before he stooped to snatch a little bit of death from the tarmac.

He picked up the revolver.

He could tell it was loaded this time, could feel the weight of the thing, heavy in his hand. He thumbed the hammer back as he turned, backpedaling between the old fuel pumps.

On they came, slowing to force their way between the pumps, not fighting each other, simply unaware, tripping one another up as they squeezed through the bottleneck. He leveled the gun at the one in the lead; a woman, according to the dress. The weapon bellowed, bucked, and the zombie behind her fell, head a spattered ruin. The body dropped into the gap between the pumps, slowing the zombies behind it, their legs entangling in its suddenly inanimate limbs.

He avoided the female, ducking left, using the pumps to impede them again. He shot one when the range was close enough, then another, nameless stuff spraying the pumps as corpses dropped between them, further slowing the following dead. He fired three more times before the gun clicked empty, and he cast it aside as he ran to scoop up the machete.

Chest heaving, he faced his remaining hunters, two relatively fresh zombies: a male wearing a disgusting sweater who lacked more than half his face, and the female he’d missed at the pumps, torn dress still almost pretty, despite the blood from her missing right arm.

“No.” The word was a sob, tears streaming down his face.

Was that why his first shot had gone wide? Had he recognized that dress even in the touch-and-go of a running gunfight, the revolver twitching aside at the last second? Had he instinctively not fired at that ugly sweater, a family joke his father had taken good-naturedly for as long as the boy could remember?

“No!”

The cry was ragged, torn from him as he backed from the staggering figures. His father tracked him awkwardly, his one remaining eye staring. His mother stumbled, ragged dress fluttering in the breeze, exposing a section of leg where there was no leg, thigh stripped to the bone, exposed muscle gnawed and raw, the leg stiff and wooden.

“That
ain’t
your ma!”

He heard the words but didn’t spare a glance toward the old man. He stumbled back, staring at that hand reaching for him, fingers stiffening and curling with anticipation, wondering which hand this was: the one that caressed his hair as it pushed him down into the barrel, or the one that had held the lid for him?

That one touched my hair
, he decided, watching it draw closer as she staggered faster than he retreated.

“That ain’t her! Your ma is
dead
, been dead for a week. This is just something using her leftovers like a tool, a tool that
looks
like her!”

Some quiet, clinical part of the boy suspected the peak of her screaming had come when they’d done that to her leg, but that sudden stop, her awful silence
 . . . 
that had come when they took her arm.

“Take back her leftovers! Put it down, boy, take it back so we can bury her proper!”

He held the machete in a loose, two-handed grip, its tip pointed in her general direction, but this was less threat than reflex action. The blade tip bounced about as he moved, wove a looping figure eight more than a foot wide in the air, but her dead, filmed eyes didn’t follow it. She was focused entirely on him, on him alone, with no evidence she even considered the weapon.

For his part, it never even occurred to him to swing. He still held the blade only because he never thought to put it down. Or perhaps there
was
some small thing of self-preservation in this; maybe that calm, clinical part of him, somewhere deep inside, was aware of her rotting flesh and champing teeth, and was afraid.

But afraid or not, he couldn’t take a swing at her,
shouldn’t
take a swing at her. He couldn’t hurt her any more than she could hurt him. And she wouldn’t hurt him.
Couldn’t
hurt him. Because she was his—

“Mom?” he whispered, his feet grinding to a halt on the tarmac, left hand leaving the handle of the machete to reach out toward those straining fingers, fingers that had twined in his hair as she pushed him into the barrel. Into safety.

Right before she told him she loved him.

“Mom.” He smiled, and began to take a step forward.

“
Look out!
”

Iron fingers clamped about his left bicep. A powerful yank spun him left, his right hand flying high for balance, the weight of what he’d forgotten he even carried pulling it wide, swinging it in an arc—

—that stopped when the machete’s blade lodged in the side of his father’s head with a wooden
chunk
.

“
No!
”

The line of the blade crossed the edge of his father’s jaw, had caught it in mid-chatter, breaking it, shooting it six inches to the side like the platen on an old-fashioned typewriter. The boy reeled in horror, but his father never slowed, shambling forward, misaligned jaw waggling like a scolding finger as it tried to bite. Seeing his own hand still gripping the handle of the blade buried in what was left of his father’s face shocked him, caused a change within him as, deep down, something buried even further inside than that quiet, analytical part
 . . . 
broke.

“
No!
”

He had been falling back; now he
pulled
back, twisting the handle to free the blade. He spun right as he pulled, keeping himself away from the grabbing left hand as the right hand, still tightly clamped to his upper arm, pulled the zombie off-balance. The two zombies collided, further disrupting both their pursuits. The female fell to the ground with a hollow
crack
, gnawed left leg not up to the task, but the male maintained his grip on the boy’s arm. The machete rose, then fell, the blade nearly severing the zombie’s arm at the elbow.

The shock knocked the clutching hand loose, but the zombie simply staggered on, closing on him with sudden speed. The boy stumbled back, feet twisting upon themselves as he tried to raise the machete for another blow, but he was too slow,
too slow
—

—and the zombie missed, the nearly severed arm dangling from the outthrust stump, hand still clutching and grabbing though only a thin strip of tissue held the remains of the elbow together. The boy sidestepped, eyes fastened to the spot just below that waggling flag of a broken jaw. The machete rose. The boy screamed.

The machete fell.

Blood flowed, thick with pus, chunks of blackened meat bumping in the weak current like the last bits of cereal floating in the bowl of milk as fluids moved lazily, without any kind of systolic pressure. The hideous sweater his dad had worn so proudly, proof of the love of a father for his young son, sopped up the gore like a woolen towel. The boy avoided looking at the round object rolling in a tight circle, bumping as the offset jaw, still waggling, tapped time in the center.

He stiffened at the
clack-clack-clack
of teeth close behind, and spun.

She lay full length upon the ground, left leg missing below the thigh. Now the boy clearly saw the gnaw marks on the stub of bone protruding from the meat, where the dead had chewed through his mother’s living limb like someone starting in the middle of an ear of corn, teeth closing hard on the cob in the center, trying to suck up every last bit of sweet kernel. The chewing had weakened the bone, splintered it, so the impact of his father’s body had snapped it like a rotted stick, leaving her to drag herself toward him one-armed and single-legged, in a ghastly parody of an army crawl.

Her eyes were still focused on him and only him, though now he recognized what he saw in them. It wasn’t love, or caring, or even some maternal instinct mysteriously surviving death to cause a faint glimmer of recognition.

It was hunger.

Hunger drove her
 . . . 
drove
it
, to drag itself across a field of rot and gore, over the fallen body of one who had once been her husband—the love of her life—without a second glance, implacably moving toward the only food in sight: one who had been her only son, whom she had once given her life to protect.