Renegades (16 page)

And began making noise.

68

Buck stared at Ken in horror, and stopped pulling for a moment.

Two hands stabbed out and took his place.  Christopher.  Grin back in its normal position, his fingers darting into the crack and pulling for all he was worth as Ken continued banging away at the door.

Whud… whud… whud….

The sound of his fist thumping against the door sounded not merely loud, but deafening in the space.  The crackle of burning floor and ceiling tiles was the only other noise, an eerie and almost painful crepitation that crawled through the empty spaces in the cab like a many-legged insect.

Whud… whud….

Something coughed above him.

Not directly above, I hope
.

He looked down.  Hope was still staring at him.  Not smiling, not looking with that too-knowing gaze.  She appeared almost confused, and Ken chose to take that as a good sign.

He kept hammering at the door.  Three more hits.

Another cough.  Gagging and rasping.  The first time he had seen one of the things vomit the acid, the stuff had melted its own flesh.  He wondered if that would happen every time; if the things would have to essentially suicide to produce this weapon.

That’s assuming they’re not already dead
.

The world had gone insane hours ago.  The pre-change rules no longer applied.

The sound of sizzling, the acid-smell of charring plastic and metal drew Ken’s attention outward.

He looked up.  Waiting for the glowing appearance of the acid.  Expecting it to fall through the ceiling, to splash over his face, to burn through his skull and fry his brain to mush.

Nothing.

Something else was happening, though.

“You feel that?” whispered Christopher.

Ken nodded.  And banged harder.

69

“It’s starting to hurt!”

“I know!”

“Really!”

“I know!”

Ken was aware they were no longer whispering.  But he didn’t care.  He couldn’t let it stop him.  He kept hitting the door.  Kept pounding at it – with both fists now, even though each hit with his maimed left hand sent shockwaves of pain through his entire body.

The things were moving again.  They sounded surprisingly light, a soughing of leaves overhead, a sighing of wind to the sides and beneath their feet.

Then more gagging, more coughing.  More sizzling.

More heat.

The elevator doors were starting to get hot to the touch.  Ken had gambled that the things were following the sounds the survivors were making.  Had hoped that if he hit the doors, the monsters would spew acid on them – behind them – and maybe melt whatever was holding them locked in place.

So far it hadn’t worked.  The zombies weren’t puking acid directly on their heads, true, so that much had worked out.  But the doors were still solidly shut.  And getting hot.  Acid must be waterfalling its way down the other side of the metal.  Eating through from that side.

The elevator began sliding down.

Ken looked at Aaron.  The cowboy shook his head.  Just an inch to the left, an inch to the right, but it was enough to communicate that whatever brakes had been holding the elevator aloft were giving out.

Christopher was groaning.  A low, animal moan.  Pain.  But he didn’t stop pulling the doors.

Buck started pulling as well.  Shouldered Ken aside and yanked on the doors.

Something inside the mechanism pinged.

The doors slid open a few inches.

Far enough to allow one of the zombies – one that had climbed down from the elevator, perhaps, or maybe one that had been looking through the building proper for them – to heave itself into the elevator.

70

The thing lurched forward, and Ken saw Christopher fling himself back.  He didn’t shout.

No one did.

It was as though the cab was no longer filled with the living, but with the dead.  With ghosts who were only going through the motions of life, but stripped of all voice.

Buck didn’t move away.

He grabbed a hank of the zombie’s hair.  Slammed the thing’s head sideways into the acid-heated elevator doors.  Flesh bubbled and the zombie screamed.

Ken moved forward, not sure what he was going to do, but sure he couldn’t let the thing get into the cab.  Sure he couldn’t let it bite Buck.

The elevator fell.  Not a small drop this time.  Probably ten feet.  Everyone tumbled to the floor.

And still not a sound.

Not even when Buck managed to stand and Ken realized the big man was still holding onto the zombie’s hair.  Still holding the thing’s snapping head at bay… even though the head was no longer attached to anything else.  The body had been left behind, neatly decapitated by the ceiling as the elevator fell.

Buck held the head at arm’s length, his face almost comically disgusted.  The zombie’s teeth opened and closed, its teeth clapping and gnashing.  No sound came from its mouth.

Not breathing.

No heart.

As Ken watched, the stump of the neck started to froth.  Bone and blood and muscle disappeared, sealed over by a waxy yellow substance that reminded him of the stuff the zombies had been secreting in the building where he found his family.

Before Derek died.

Don’t think that.

What the hell is HAPPENING?

The frothing stopped.  The zombie’s eyes rolled around, looking from one person in the cab to another.  It was still silent, but its teeth kept snapping.

Ken heard someone gag.  Sounded like Maggie.

“Guys!”

Ken tore his eyes from the horrific, impossible vision of death that refused to die.

Christopher had stood up.  Was staring at something.  But before Ken could do more than glance at it, the coughing started again.  From everywhere.

71

Ken grabbed Maggie.  She didn’t pull away from him this time, didn’t make any pretense of resistance.  She was almost limp, like the sight of the thing that still spit and bit while held aloft by nothing more than Buck’s hand had burned out any resentment she held against Ken.

He shoved her toward Christopher.  The younger man caught her and started moving Ken’s wife toward the gap in the elevator doors.  Toward the gap in the outer doors that led to a dark floor beyond.

There was an offset between the level of the elevator and the level of the floor past it.  Not only that, but the outer doors were only open about a foot and a half.  Ken couldn’t tell what had opened them, but he wasn’t about to question one of the rare gifts received in all this.  Still, the gap was only barely wide enough to allow his wife to exit, shimmying through with Liz at her chest, stepping up to get to the floor that was about a foot above the floor of the elevator.

And then she was gone.  Disappeared in the darkness.

Ken turned around.  “Dorcas!”

The older woman moved forward.  She glanced at Aaron as though hesitant to leave without him.  He nodded and gave her a swift shove.

She pushed her way through the gap as well.

Followed by Aaron.

Then Christopher.

Buck didn’t move through it all.  Just stared at the head.  He looked like the sight of it had frozen something in him, had sent his mind into a fractal freefall that would permit no escape.

“Buck.”  Buck didn’t move.

Ken realized he shouldn’t have been able to see anything.  Christopher was gone, and with him the light.

He looked up.

The entire ceiling was aglow.  Bulging and curving.  Acid ready to fall through not in a trickle or a stream, but in a torrent.  A waterfall that would doom anyone inside the elevator.

“Buck, we have to go.  Now!”

Buck didn’t seem to hear him.  Ken tried pulling the big man.  Nothing.

He moved to the gap.  “Buck, please!” he called, but he couldn’t stay.  Not any longer.

He stepped into the gap.  Stepped through and up to the floor beyond.  Halfway between worlds.  Between one Hell and, perhaps, another.

But at least Maggie was waiting on the floor.

He stepped up.  Leading with Hope.  Half his body in the elevator.  Half his body out.

And something grabbed his hair.

72

A scream tore its way out of Ken’s throat.  Not just fear, but indignation.  He was halfway out of the elevator, halfway back to being
alive
, dammit.  What was stopping him?

At first he thought it was Buck.  But why would the big man grab him?

Besides, the angle was wrong.  This was something else.

The growling started again.  Snarling.  The ugly and yet subtly hypnotic call of the monsters, and Ken felt himself drawn upwards.  He rose to the balls of his feet and realized that one of the things on top of the elevator must have reached down somehow, must have caught him.

Something blinded him.  A bouncing light that seemed far too bright and also made his skin crawl, as though the terror that held him tight had also given him temporary synesthesia.  He could feel sights and hear colors and smell tastes and everything was mixed up in his mind and he wondered –

(
Is this what it feels like before you die?
)

– what was happening.

Something tore Hope away from him.  He screamed.  Reached for her.  The thing slapped his hand down.  “Stop!” shouted a voice.

Christopher.  The light Ken was seeing was the penlight the younger man had appropriated from Buck.  And now Christopher was yanking at him.  Trying to pull Ken the rest of the way out of the elevator.

But the thing above wouldn’t let go.  Ken felt his neck popping.  Felt like his head would be yanked free from his shoulders.

Smoke poured out of the elevator around him.

The elevator jounced again.  Dropped another inch.  Ken saw an image of Buck holding the decapitated head.  Wondered if he would be severed so cleanly in half along his vertical axis.

No, it’ll be messier
.

Christopher pulled harder.  So did the thing on top.

The elevator was groaning and moaning like a living thing about to give in to a fatal wound.

And then something hit Ken on the back of the head.

73

Where a moment before Christopher’s light had blinded Ken, now he could barely see it.  His vision blurred, then doubled momentarily.  He blinked, tried to shake his head.  Couldn’t.

What’s –

Why can’t –

Something’s got me.

The jumble of thoughts resorted themselves just in time for something to hit him again.  Christopher was pulling him forward, the monster that had reached down from on top of the elevator was pulling him up.  The elevator was about to fall.

And
whump
.

Ken’s vision didn’t blur this time, but rather exploded into a collection of sparklers.  The kind the kids loved to run around with on the Fourth of July.  Giggling and laughing in half-joy, half-terror: caught up in the ecstasy of the celebration, but at the same time dreadfully afraid of being burnt.  Little hands held as far from little bodies as possible.  Little mouths wrinkled in fear-smiles.  Laughter that tilted into ranges that blurred with hysteria.  When you were a child, the lines between euphoria and panic could disappear in an instant.

But they loved the things.  Loved the sparklers that Ken now saw everywhere in his eyes, in his mind.

Especially Derek.

Have to buy extra for him this year.

But he’s dead, isn’t he?

Another thud.  Ken felt wetness on the back of his neck.  Warmth flowing down his skin.

Stop hitting me.

Third concussion.  Or is it my fourth?

What’s the world record for noggin knocks?

Someone call Guiness!

His thoughts were just so much loose change rattling in his skull.  But he was suddenly aware that he was no longer lighter than himself.  The thing that had been pulling him upward had stopped yanking at him.

In fact… he turned his head.  Slowly.  It took longer than it should have.  His neck creaked like a rusty hinge.

He was out of the elevator.

Everything was illuminated in flickering half-shadows.  Ken couldn’t tell if that was because something was wrong with Christian’s light –

(
Wait, is his name Christian or Christopher?  Or just Chris?  What’s his name again?  Derek?
)

– or with his own vision.  Maybe both.  Perhaps all three.

Three?  What three?  Aren’t there more of us?  Not just three?  Derek, Liz, Hope?

Hope isn’t one of us.

You’re losing it, Ken
.

Everything seemed disjointed.  Separated.  But he managed to make out Buck through the gap in the elevator doors and through the clouds of acid-smoke that poured out of the cab.  The big man – more a silhouette than a featured figure – threw something round behind him –

(
It’s a head where did he get a head why isn’t he wearing his head?
)

– and then leaped for the gap.

Behind Buck, bright streams of black light poured down.  A sound like bacon frying chittered into the air.

“Move!” someone shouted.

It’s the cowboy man.  The killer man.

 Buck made it to the doors.  Pushed himself into the gap.

The elevator started to fall out from under his back foot.

Metal pinged.  Popped.

Buck’s face slackened.  He looked… relieved.  Like he’d been hoping for this.

And the elevator fell out from beneath him.

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