Shift
Author: Michaelbrent Collings
Date: 2014-05-28 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Zombies
Description: The dead are no longer the only threat... *** After all they have gone through, all their struggles to survive, Ken and his friends have found monsters within. Ken is alone. Again separated from his family. And true friends have become enemies. Now Ken must fight again. Alive, but alone. Separated not only by distance, but by speed. And other enemies will come as well. Forces beyond comprehension are at work. And everything is about to change...

Copyright © 2014 by Michaelbrent Collings

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author. For information send request to info@michaelbrentcollings.com.

website: http://www.michaelbrentcollings.com
email: info@michaelbrentcollings.com

cover and interior art elements © Lonely
used under license from Shutterstock.com
cover design by Michaelbrent Collings

NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

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PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF

MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS

CRIME SEEN

"[Crime Seen] will keep you guessing until the end…. 5/5. " – Horror Novel Reviews

"It's rare to find an ending to a novel that is clever, thought-provoking and surprising, yet here Collings nails all three…." – Ravenous Reads

"Crime Seen by Michaelbrent Collings is one of those rare books that deserves more than five stars." – Top of the Heap Reviews

"With an ending that, again, will keep you guessing until the last chapter, I would definitely recommend this book to others." – Horror Drive-In

THE COLONY: GENESIS (The Colony, Vol. 1)

"5 out of 5 stars.... I couldn't put it down." – Media Mikes

"I barely had time to buckle my mental seatbelt before the pedal hit the metal...." – The Horror Fiction Review

"What a refreshing read. This is the first of a series and if this is any indication of what's to come, count me in! .... If I could, I would gladly give this novel a 10 star rating." – Horror Novel Reviews

THE COLONY: RENEGADES (The Colony, Vol. 2)

"Fast pace in your face, the action doesn't stop.... This bestselling author has done it again.... I didn't want the book to end...." – Horror Novel Reviews

"Renegades is a hardcore thriller that you can't stop reading." – horroraddicts.net

THE COLONY: DESCENT (The Colony, Vol. 3)

"I had planned on reading just a couple of chapters and ended up reading the entire book in one sitting! ... Rating: 4.5/5" – Horror Novel Reviews

"Renegades is a hardcore thriller that you can't stop reading." – horroraddicts.net

STRANGERS

"Collings is so proficient at what he does, he crooks his finger to get you inside his world and before you know it, you are along for the ride. You don't even see it coming; he is that good." – Only Five Star Book Reviews

"Move over Stephen King... Clive Barker.... Michaelbrent Collings is taking over as the new king of the horror book genre." – Media Mikes

"STRANGERS is another white-knuckled journey that demands to be read in one sitting." – The Horror Fiction Review

"Michaelbrent spins a tale that keeps you enthralled from page to page…. Overall I give this novel an A." – The Horror Drive-In

DARKBOUND

"Really good, highly recommended, make sure you have time to read a lot at one sitting since you may have a hard time putting it down." – The Horror Fiction Review

"In Darkbound you will find the intensity of Misery and a journey reminiscent of the train ride in The Talisman…. A proficient and pedagogical author, Collings’ works should be studied to see what makes his writing resonate with such vividness of detail…. You will not be disappointed in this dark tale." – Hellnotes

"A spell-binding conclusion comes from out of nowhere that is hauntingly reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan or Alfred Hitchcock. A certifiable bone chiller…." – horrornews.net

"Darkbound travels along at a screaming pace with action the whole way through, and twists to keep you guessing throughout.... With an ending that I didn't see coming from a mile away, and easily one of the best I've had the enjoyment of reading in a long time...." – Horror Drive-In

THE HAUNTED

"The Haunted is a terrific read with some great scares and a shock of an ending!" – Rick Hautala, international bestselling author; Bram Stoker Award® for Lifetime Achievement winner

"[G]ritty, compelling and will leave you on the edge of your seat.... The Haunted is a tremendous read for fans of ghoulishly good terror." – horrornews.net

"The Haunted is just about perfect.... This is a haunted house story that will scare even the most jaded horror hounds. I loved it!" – Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of Flesh Eaters and The Savage Dead

APPARITION

"Apparition is not just a 'recommended' novel, it is easily one of the most entertaining and satisfying horror novels this reviewer has read within the past few years. I cannot imagine that any prospective reader looking for a new read in the horror genre won't be similarly blown away by the novel." – Hellnotes

"[Apparition is] a gripping, pulse hammering journey that refuses to relent until the very final act. The conclusion that unfolds may cause you to sleep with the lights on for a spell.... Yet be forewarned perhaps it is best reserved for day time reading." – horrornews.net

"Apparition is a hard core supernatural horror novel that is going to scare the hell out of you.... This book has everything that you would want in a horror novel.... it is a roller coaster ride right up to a shocking ending." – horroraddicts.net

"[Apparition is] Riveting. Captivating. Mesmerizing.... [A]n effective, emotional, nerve-twisting read, another amazingly well-written one from a top-notch writer." – The Horror Fiction Review

THE LOON

"It's always so nice to find one where hardcore asylum-crazy is done RIGHT.... THE LOON is, hands down, an excellent book." – The Horror Fiction Review

"Highly recommended for horror and thriller lovers. It's fast-moving, as it has to be, and bloody and violent, but not disgustingly gory.... Collings knows how to write thrillers, and I'm looking forward to reading more from him." – Hellnotes

MR. GRAY (aka THE MERIDIANS)

"... an outstanding read.... This story is layered with mystery, questions from every corner and no answers fully coming forth until the final conclusion.... What a ride.... This is one you will not be able to put down and one you will remember for a long time to come. Very highly recommended." – Midwest Book Review

RUN

"[A] tense and intense scary sci-fi chiller/thriller.... RUN is a winner, as fast-paced as it should be, cinematic and gripping, lots of fun but with moments of poignancy and disturbing paranoia." – The Horror Fiction Review

HOOKED: A TRUE FAERIE TALE

"Hooked is a story with depth.... Emotional, sad, horrific, and thought provoking, this one was difficult to put down and now, one of my favourite tales." – Only Five Star Book Reviews

"[A]n interesting and compelling read.... Collings has a way with words that pulls you into every moment of the story, absorbing every scene with all of your senses." – Clean Romance Reviews

"Collings has found a way to craft an entirely new modern vampire mythology – and one strikingly different from everything I've seen before.... Recommended for adult and teen fans of horror and paranormal romance...." – Hellnotes

RISING FEARS

"The writing is superb. The characters are believable and sympathetic... the theme of a parent who's lost a child figures strongly; it's powerful stuff, and written from the perspective of experience that no one should ever have to suffer." – The Horror Fiction Review

Dedication

To...

Jeff Short and Ron Gressman, who helped me get the true facts – even though I probably ignored most of them,

and to Laura, FTAAE.

Contents

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1

“I bet you’d like to know what’s going on.”

The words hung in the air, and somehow they didn’t seem to make it to Ken Strickland. He heard them, but understanding eluded him. Just like the reason he was here escaped his understanding.

The world had ended.

He had lost his son.

His daughters were… changing. Into what, he had no idea. He only knew that they vacillated between the two- and seven-year-old he knew, and a pair of strangers who seemed to want the destruction of the few people who had managed to survive the first days of the end of the world.

Maggie… at least she was still his. Still his wife, still his love.

But where was she?

The words the cowboy had spoken remained in midair between them. Caught in a stasis of unreality far greater than that of men and women who turned on one another, than that of insects swarming and attacking and dying in the millions, even greater than the dead rising up to attack the living.

“I bet you’d like to know what’s going on.”

Ken didn’t understand the words, so he ignored them. Turned away from them, mentally and literally. He craned his neck around.

He was inside a steel box. Corrugated sides, top. It was gunmetal gray, nearly featureless. It smelled like feed, a gamey smell that was nearly pleasant and brought to mind horses and cattle and farms – things that spoke of life and a world that had been, a world that should still be. He was in an empty shipping container.

A boxcar.

The box that should have contained life but had somehow become a tomb swayed slightly. It jounced minutely. Tok-tok. Tok-tok. Tok-tok. The sound of steel wheels passing over rolled steel. The sound of rails that had born this burden millions of times without complaint, unaware that this would perhaps be the final passage that they would see.

Tok-tok. Tok-tok. Tok-tok.

Ken wondered briefly how the train was even moving. When the world end, shouldn’t that mean trains stopped? What good would schedules be when there was no one waiting at the terminal? When cargo would only be met by bloodthirsty killers?

How had he gotten here?

He tried to stand, lurched a few inches upward and then fell to his side as something blocked his feet. He looked down and saw his hands and feet were bound with zip tie cuffs, the kind favored by cops as convenient ways to deal with drunks and common criminals.

“I bet you’d like to know what’s going on.”

Tok-tok. Tok-tok. Tok-tok.

And now he remembered. Remembered being saved by newcomers Theresa and Elijah, who had appeared out of nowhere to whisk them away from attacking hordes. Theresa had run dozens of them over in a school bus, plowing through the monsters just in time to save Ken and his friends; then Elijah had shown up and mangled many more with a John Deere thresher.

They abandoned the farm equipment near a train, of all things. Elijah had mentioned something about Theresa’s brother, how he had stayed behind to cover their escape – a death sentence – because he “hadn’t known how to drive” something. Elijah must have meant this vehicle, this cruising iron beast that Ken had at first been surprised to see, then willing to use.

And then their rescuers had turned on them. Theresa, a chubby redhead who had gone to so much trouble and seen the sacrifice of her family to rescue Ken and his friends and family. Elijah, a huge black man with a smile so bright it dazzled. They had turned guns on Ken.

No. Not me. They aimed them at the girls. At Hope and Lizzy.

And before Ken could move… before he could even think about stopping them.

Aaron. The cowboy who had saved them all time after time. He had attacked Ken from behind. Had choked him unconscious.

And now he was looking at Ken. Sitting across from him, holding a flashlight that was the only illumination in this mobile jail cell.

Ken maneuvered himself into a sitting position. He pushed himself up to the wall of the boxcar. Stared at a man he would have given his life to. A man who had betrayed him.

“I bet you’d like to know what’s going on.”

The words finally made it across the wide gap between them. Penetrated a pain-fogged body and an exhausted mind.

“Yeah,” he said. Bitterness writhed through the word. “I guess you could say that.”

2

Aaron had a strange look on his face as he started speaking. The shadows the flashlight cast on his face might have had something to do with it, but Ken thought it was more than that. The cowboy looked like he was about to have the birds and the bees talk with a two-year-old, or something else equally disconcerting.

He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. He had to use the same hand that held the flashlight: the other had had its fingers dislocated and thumb badly broken during one of the times he had defended Ken and the other survivors from an onslaught of zombies.

It just doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that, if this was the end?

Aaron hunched down in front of Ken.

“You wonder why we have stories and legends about zombies in the first place?”

Ken shook his head. Again, the words didn’t seem to penetrate. He had been choked, burnt, concussed, his back knocked partially out of alignment, two of his fingers cut off. It all threw up a wall that shielded him from comprehension. He had to focus on the words, had to expend more energy than usual on what Aaron had said.

“Because people are weird,” he finally said. “Because Hollywood people and novelists are messed up in the head.” He shrugged. “I dunno.” He aimed a glare at Aaron. “Where’s my family?”

Aaron ignored his question. “Yeah, I thought that, too. Enjoyed a lot of good zombie movies in my day. Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later. Hell, I even liked that Warm Bodies flick. Cried a bit when the dead guy got the girl.” He leaned in a bit. “You notice how half of them have live zombies, half of them have undead ones? Ones that rise from the grave?”

“So?”

“So I don’t think the people who made up all those ideas were really making them up at all.”

In spite of himself, in spite of his need to know what was happening to his family, Ken finally asked the question he knew Aaron was hoping for. “What do you mean?”

“I think those ideas – the ideas of live zombies and dead ones – were… well, put there, for lack of a better word.”

3

That cut through the blur, the fog that had become a constant companion in Ken’s mind.

“Put there?” he said. “What the hell does that mean?”

Again Aaron passed his unmarred hand over his forehead. Again the flashlight scarred the darkness of the freight car.

“I think this is an invasion,” he said. “I’ve seen ‘em before. Been a part of ‘em before.”

Ken shook his head. “What does an invasion have to do with –”

“The most successful invasions start in one of two ways,” Aaron continued, talking over Ken as though he had never spoken. “Either the invading force infiltrates the enemy, taking them over from within, or they attack with overwhelming force and crush them as fast as possible.”

“Shock and awe,” murmured Ken.

“Something like that,” said Aaron. “So what I think is that these zombies, they aren’t the first wave. The first wave happened decades, maybe centuries ago. Ideas that came into our minds, became a part of our subconscious, a part of our stories. The dead rising up, the living becoming hyper-fast monsters who live only to kill.”

Ken shook his head. “You’re saying the zombie stories were some kind of propaganda? Some attempt to win us over to the idea of the walking dead?” He snorted.

Aaron shook his own head. “No, Ken. You ain’t understanding me. I think those ideas came into our heads because these things – the things that caused the zombies – tried to change us before. Maybe they were too weak, or maybe we were too strong. But either way, they couldn’t change us. They could only give us glimpses. Shadows, dreams. Ideas that some of us took and wrote stories about, told legends about. They became part of our stories, and we never realized….”

Ken stared at the cowboy, the once-friend, the once-savior who had become a traitor and kidnapper. “We never realized…?”

“Never realized that the stories weren’t stories. They were intercepted communications. They were the enemy’s first attempt to take us over. To take us, to change us. To kill us and take our place.”

4

Aaron must have seen the disbelief on Ken’s face. Ken didn’t want to give away what was going on inside; was actively trying to mask his feelings. But what Aaron was saying was so incredible, so ridiculous –

(so right, don’t forget that, you know he’s telling the truth)

– that it was impossible for him to keep his feelings locked inside.

The zombies had come to them before?

The movies, the books, the stories were all evidence of previous… what… invasion attempts? Recon missions?

It was all too crazy.

Aaron touched Ken’s shoulder. “I know, it’s nuts. But it fits. The way it all happened at once. The whole world went bonkers in ten minutes, Ken. There was no outbreak, no gradual infection. Just half the world turned, and then turned on the other half in the space of ten minutes.”

Ken nodded in spite of himself. Thinking of the way the things had turned their heads up, mouths open, panting in time. Like they had been on some sort of cosmic remote control. Like they were….

Downloading.

That was it. Like they were receiving information. Instructions, or alterations.

Aaron seemed to be following Ken’s thoughts, unspoken or not. He made a jabbing motion with his good hand. “And they don’t die when you hit ‘em in the head. They go nuts.”

Ken seized on that. Clutched it like a man about to drown, a man grasping crazily for anything that might serve as a lifeline. Even if it meant dragging that thing down to the depths and death right with him.

“That’s right! That means the stories were wrong. So they couldn’t –”

Aaron cut him off. “Misinformation. It won’t kill ‘em, but it cuts off the control of…” and he nodded upward, “… whatever’s controlling ‘em.” He was silent a moment before continuing, “They don’t want us attacking them that way, so they include a bit of over-confidence. Think about it: they say to our minds that all we need to do is hit them with an easy headshot. And the first time we do, we think, ‘Holy shit, don’t do that again.’ Keeps the army intact.”

Ken thought about what did happen with the things when their heads were attacked. “What about that pink and black stuff that comes out? Where are their brains? And how did the ones in the airplane – the dead ones – rise from the dead? Explain that, Aaron.”

He realized he sounded pleading. Realized that was no mistake. His sanity might hang on the reply. The answers Aaron was providing just made everything worse. It was one thing to realize that they had been hit by some hideous virus, a manmade mistake or a natural response to humanity’s long history of cavalier abuse of the planet.

But an attack? An…

… invasion?

That was what it had to be. If the things were doing this, they had to be coming from somewhere above them. Somewhere not of this world. Somewhere alien. And somewhere that didn’t even view the world Ken understood as worthy of anything but extermination.

Ken shuddered, and so did Aaron. Just a small twitch, but the cowboy looked as uncomfortable as he ever had. Any show of discomfort on the other man’s part always scared Ken. The man was a rock; the only time he’d let himself really succumb to emotion was when Dorcas –

(one more lost, just like Derek, just like my boy)

– had nearly died. Then he had been a force of nature, an unstoppable juggernaut. Now, he looked suddenly all-too-human. Just one more primitive cowering in the dark, praying the lightning wouldn’t strike too close.

“Aaron,” Ken whispered, “what does this have to do with Hope and Lizzy? With Derek?” Because even though his boy had been bitten, he had come back. And there was no escaping the fact that even as a zombie his son had been different. Special. Almost revered.

Aaron hesitated.

And in that moment, the train rocked on its wheels. Then again, much harder.

5

Aaron froze. Ken was already immobile, propped against the inside wall of the boxcar. But he tensed. The motion felt stronger than the subtle bounce of train wheels over the seams of steel rails.

It didn’t repeat.

Aaron had been staring upward, an eerie analog to the stare of the zombies that he contended were the advance force of some other threat – perhaps something even worse.

Now he looked back at Ken. And chose to ignore the question that had just been asked. He grabbed Ken’s arm instead. Ken didn’t understand why, until the cowboy felt his forearm, and something burned.

The bite.

So much had happened that Ken had – if not forgotten, then at least buried the fact that he had been bitten by one of the things. A half-circle of scarred flesh where one of the creatures had planted its upper teeth and bitten down hard enough to break the skin only a few days before. A descent through the passenger space of a crashed plane, a hellish walk through an inferno inhabited by the walking dead.

Ken had been bitten. Bitten, but hadn’t turned. Hadn’t Changed.

He might have figured that it was because the thing that bit him had been one of the undead, as opposed to one of the things transformed directly from life to unthinking psychopaths. But no, Dorcas had been bitten by the same things. Bitten while covering the exit of the rest of the group. She had stayed behind, knowing it was the last thing she would do, knowing she would be bitten.

And then she had come back. And stood at Derek’s side. Along with the half-burnt giant who had Changed Ken’s boy.

So the undead things’ bite could cause the Change.

But not in Ken.

Why?

“You’re not special,” said Aaron. “We don’t think so, anyway. And we don’t think it’d be a good idea for you to get fully bitten to test the hypothesis.”

That last word reminded Ken that Aaron was much more than a simple cowboy. He was very, very smart. Something more than the simple ol’ country boy he pretended to be. What exactly, Ken had no idea. Just one more mystery.

Aaron traced the half-circle on Ken’s forearm. “You only got half-bit. We think that’s why you didn’t turn.” He looked at Ken. “We think that what started this all was a transmission. Some kind of radio- or radioactive-like wave that attacked our minds and caused them to change our bodies instantaneously.”

“That’s impossible.”

Aaron grunted. “All this is impossible. But that would explain the pink crap that explodes out of their heads when you hit them hard enough. The brain gets changed. It’s not a brain anymore, it’s some kind of gel that exists to boost transmission from….” He nodded up. “And when they bite us, it focuses that transmission on the person who gets bit. Changes ‘em.” He traced the semicircle on Ken’s arm again. “You only got half-bit,” he said again. “Wasn’t enough to fully focus the transmission.” He looked Ken in the eye. “You got damn lucky, Ken. Damn lucky.”

Ken thought about it. About the sense of it. It fit, but it was guesswork. Still, Aaron was speaking as if it was more than simple conjecture. He spoke as if he knew. Certainty in his voice. Ken almost asked what the cowboy was holding back.

Then he realized that Aaron hadn’t answered one question. The most important question.

“Aaron,” he said, and put as much force into his voice as he could. He tried to imagine that it was the cowboy that was bound, and he was the one who was free and held the only light in the car. “What does this have to do with my kids?”

Aaron looked away. Looked down.

“Ken,” he finally said. “I think we might have to kill them.”

6

When he said the words, he said them in a monotone. A voice that was bereft of concern. He might as well have been announcing that he had to go to the Laundromat: “Gotta go to the store. We’re out of milk. Might have to kill your kids.”

Ken didn’t know if that meant he didn’t care about Liz and Hope. Maybe he did care, and this was the only way he could say it.

It didn’t matter. Either way, it didn’t matter.

All that mattered was the words. The words that spoke of a death sentence for his family. For his remaining children.

Derek’s gone. He wants to take Hope and Lizzy.

Ken’s body moved without his involvement. As though it sensed that the children it had had a part in creating were in danger. The animal part of him that was separate from his conscious mind took over. He shoved his way up the wall, faster than he would have thought possible. Adrenaline seized him, pushed him instantly beyond himself. Everything disappeared around him, leaving only a dark tunnel with the pinpoint spot of light that marked Aaron’s location.

He was standing in an eyeblink, and in the next moment launched himself at the light. A noise that might have been “No!” but might just as easily have been a wordless shriek bounced around the metal boxcar. His bound hands reached for the cowboy. Fingers outstretched. Palms out to grab the man. To throttle the danger away from his children.

Aaron stepped aside. It might have been the distorting effect of the adrenaline, the curvature of space and time inflicted by Ken’s panic, but the move seemed almost casual. Aaron just stood and moved away. Ken slammed down with an “Oof” on the bare metal of the boxcar. Bounced. Air exploded from his lungs. He gasped. Tried to breathe. Couldn’t.

A boot landed on the back of his neck.

“Don’t. Do. That. Again.” The words were tight as overwound watch springs. Vibrating with tension. Barely-contained danger.

Ken had felt something crack when he landed. He held himself absolutely still. Unwilling to reveal the pain of what had just happened.

He heard a sigh. The light shifted and he could imagine the cowboy passing his hand over his forehead again. “None of this is what we want. And none of it is set in stone. But –”

The train rocked again. Harder than before. Hard enough that Aaron’s boot came off Ken’s neck as the cowboy stumbled. Ken tried not to move, tried to remain on his stomach, as motionless as possible.

The cowboy was silent a moment.

Then the scuff of boots.

The slide of a door. Light speared in.

“Stay,” said Aaron. Ken felt like a whipped dog.

The light disappeared.

All was dark.

The boxcar shifted again as something rocked the train.

Ken smiled.

7

Ken waited ten seconds to be sure. Sure that Aaron wasn’t coming back. Sure he was alone.

Sure that he had actually heard the crack.

When Aaron stepped out of the way, Ken’s hands went under him. An automatic reaction, the motion of a person about to fall flat on his face. Not so helpful when your hands are bound together with zip cuffs, and all that happened was he ended up crashing his full body weight on his arms and wrists. It hurt. Hurt the stumps of his left pinky and ring finger, which were scabbed over but still ached like hell. Hurt the bruises and scrapes that covered his body. Hurt the back of his head, concussed and lacerated. Hurt the front tooth that he had lost and jammed back in its socket and which had miraculously stayed in place through the last hours or days or however long it had been since Aaron took him by surprise.

The fall especially hurt his left leg, which had ached ever since he twisted his back when – it seemed like a hundred years ago – all this began.

Mostly, though, it hurt his wrists, where the zip ties wrapped tightly around them. They bent outward, farther than they were designed to go, the ligaments and tendons straining at their limits. Pain speared through his wrists and forearms.

He barely noticed it.

He noticed the crack.

The twin cables that looped around his wrists joined in the center, between them. And he thought – hoped – that the crack had come from there.

That the cuffs had started to break.

He stood. Twisted his wrists. There was little give. As far as he could tell, no more give than there had been. He slammed the cuffs down against his stomach, twisting his wrists at the same time.

Nothing happened.

Ken started to hear screaming. He jerked, spinning in the darkness. Trying to pinpoint the sounds. His children! They were shrieking! The high-pitched yells of Hope, the breathy screams of little Lizzy.

A moment later he realized he was hearing his own fears. Reality had not bent to that extreme. Not yet. Not that he could hear.

But it would. He had to get out of here. Had to find his wife and his children.

After all he had gone through, all he had suffered, he was back where he had started: alone and unsure where his family was. If they were alive or dead.

He slammed the cuffs into his stomach again, so hard that the breath puffed out of him. So hard he knew there would be a long, thin line of purple across his gut in the coming hours. Just one more painful voice to join the growing choir of agony that was his body.

The cuffs didn’t give.

The screams began. He thought they were in his mind. But here in the dark, here alone, it was getting harder to distinguish between reality and imagination, between truth and terror.

One more slam against his stomach.

Nothing.

The train shuddered again. He worried about what was causing the shift.

Another shudder, and he almost lost his footing in the black.

And knew what he had to do.

8

Knowing is not the same as doing.

There are untold millions of people – or had been, before the world ended, before it was (according to Aaron) invaded – who knew how to succeed in one endeavor or another. Who knew everything there was to know. But who failed in one particular: they never did. Because doing requires a first step. A moment of commitment, and a leap of faith.

An opportunity to fail.

Ken knew that his family was relying on him. But in a strange way that just made it harder to make that first move. Because standing here in the dark he could almost convince himself that Aaron was wrong, that all this would blow over, that no one was in danger. That the cowboy would never raise his hand against Ken’s family.

Here, in the closed boxcar, Ken didn’t even have to close his eyes to stay in the dark.

But then the screams started. The phantom cries that seemed to urge him beyond what he was capable of.

Ken steeled himself. This was going to hurt.

He had fallen before. Now he leaped. Jumped as high as he could, angling his body so that he would be parallel to the steel floor when he hit the apex of his leap.

Slammed down.

He screamed. He couldn’t help it. Every muscle he had – including a few he had never been aware of – twitched. His wrists had ached before. Now they were on fire.

The cuffs were still intact. His wrists still bound.

He slogged his way to his feet. It was hard. Not just because his feet were bound, not just because he ached, but because his body was fighting him.

Most people are not made to cause themselves premeditated pain. Most people will fight against it, no matter how necessary it may be. They may jump in front of cars, rush into burning buildings. But those are usually reactions without thought. To contemplate such things is usually to hesitate. To fear.

The battleground is littered with the bodies of those who rush in. And with the cowering figures of those who have time to think of what lays ahead.

Ken wrenched himself to his feet. Jumped. And again.

The fourth time, the cuffs popped away. Flew into the darkness. He was free.

No. Not free.

His feet were still bound. And he had no idea how to loose the cuffs that bound them.

9

Ken felt his ankles. The cuffs were situated the same way his wrist cuffs had been: twin circles with the locking head in front.

He flopped over on his stomach and kicked against the floor. Knowing it was useless, that his feet would get in the way of the cuffs and prevent any serious impact. Still, it was all that came to mind.

The impact brought out a muted bong from the floor, a painful spasm from the back of his left leg. Both feet tingled, all ten toes went numb and then seemed to catch fire almost immediately.

The cuffs, he was fairly certain, didn’t even touch the floor.

He flipped over and felt them. He ran his right hand over them. He didn’t bother touching them with his left. The pain from his missing fingers radiated out and throbbed with his pulse; he doubted he would be able to feel anything less defined than a railroad spike. The small details of the plastic cuffs? Forget it.

The fingers of his right hand raced around the plastic. He could picture the cuffs in his mind: white. Tiny ridges along their exterior. Both loops meeting in the middle. Threaded through a pair of holes in the head. The holes would have a locking mechanism inside that allowed for the captors – Aaron, Elijah, and Theresa – to close the cuffs. The locking mechanism only worked one way, a stiff piece of plastic inside it catching on the ridges that ran along the cuffs and allowing them to tighten but not loosen. That meant that ordinarily the cuffs would have to be cut off, unless –

The phantom cries of his daughters had made it hard for Ken to concentrate. Now they disappeared. Everything disappeared. There was only the darkness, thick and nearly impenetrable.

The darkness was the thing that was keeping him captive. The only thing.

He turned to his stomach again, and began to crawl.

10

Crawling with bound feet in the dark.

Not the way Ken wanted to be spending his minutes. But he had no choice. He had to be on his stomach, hands outstretched, waving back and forth as he moved forward.

His Doc Martens had thick rubber soles – the only reason Coach Picarelli hadn’t made a meal of his feet back at the high school – but they couldn’t get purchase. Not with him pushing inch by inch with his toes. The leather tops of his shoes just slid across the steel floor of the boxcar, and he ended up inchworming his way across the space.

His hands moved like wiper blades, back and forth, back and forth. After a moment he squeezed his eyes shut as well. It was already pitch black, but he felt oppressed by the darkness. It weighed on him. He had heard that losing your sight resulted in increased acuity to your other senses, but this prison-darkness just numbed him. Depressed him. Closed eyes had to be better. Self-imposed blindness better than the black of imprisonment by a friend.

Eyes closed, feet bound, he scrunched and then lengthened, folded then telescoped.

Maggie would laugh if she could see me.

He thought of his wife’s ridiculous laugh, that high, breathy gasp of a laugh that had always enchanted him. It almost brightened the darkness behind his eyes.

Only she wouldn’t laugh. Because she has to know the kids are in danger. And she’s terrified.

If she’s not already dead.

Fold, then extend. Fold, then extend.

His fingers crashed into something. The end of the boxcar. And all he had felt was bare floor.

Panic started to rise in the back of his throat, his heart pounding with more than the exertion of this perhaps pointless exercise.

You don’t even know if this will work.

It has to work.

Despair was so easy.

And the easy way is so rarely the right way.

Wasn’t that what he had always told his students? A million years ago, an age ago, when the world had made sense and kids had come to him with their decisions to give in to boyfriends who wanted to have sex with them or peers who wanted them to do drugs or any of a thousand other problems that teachers were not paid to deal with but so often did.

Had he meant it? Not just for them, but for himself?

He rolled over, and kicked himself around a hundred and eighty degrees. Hard to tell in the darkness, but he thought he was facing the opposite direction, angled slightly so he wouldn’t just retrace his path.

He inched forward. Hands wiping back and forth. Back and forth.

The right way is rarely the easy way. The easy way is rarely the right way. Right rarely easy, easy rarely right.

His left hand touched something.

Three fingers curled around it. Pain as they did, but Ken smiled. Tears fell from his eyes. He wiped them away.

No time to cry. Crying was easy.

And easy was rarely right.

11

For a second Ken worried that what he felt wasn’t what he wanted. Worried that it was something else entirely. Or worse, that it was a piece of what he wanted, but the wrong piece.

He gagged down panic. Reminded himself that his left hand had questionable sensory abilities. Traced it with his good hand. Two bent curls of plastic. A shattered nub in the middle of one of them.

The remains of the cuffs that had bound his wrists.

He tried not to get excited. Too many things had gone wrong, too many moments had seemed promising only to turn into situations even worse than the ones that had gone before.

The screams came back.

The train twitched again. What was happening out there?

He tried to put both the distractions – both imaginary and real – out of mind. He traced the loop of plastic to its end. Felt a smoothed triangle. The spot that was inserted into the bottom of the locking mechanism to guide the cuffs so they could be tightened.

Ken drew his knees up to his chest. His eyes still closed, he felt the cuffs around his ankles. They were snug enough that there was no way he could slip them off. But not so tight that he was in danger of losing blood flow to his feet. Whoever had put them on – Aaron, Elijah, or Theresa – had done so expertly. The cuffs were comfortable, but utterly secure.

They were just right for what Ken had in mind.

He grabbed the broken cuffs in his right hand, holding them near the triangular end of the plastic. With his left he felt for the locking mechanism of the cuffs that rested between his ankles. He found it, then pulled it up as far as he could. Not much, but it gave him a tiny bit of space.

He pushed his right hand behind his ankles, then poked the end of the broken cuff up, following the plastic spans around his ankles into their locking mechanism. He pushed the makeshift loid as far as he could, hoping he had guessed correctly. There should be a plastic lever that clicked against the ridges of each cuff, and he was hoping to wedge it open with the end of the broken cuff.

He pushed as far as he could. Then moved his hand to the ends of the cuffs that bound his ankles. He pushed on one.

Nothing. It was still locked firm.

He pushed the other.

And it moved.

He wiggled his jury-rigged lock pick back and forth, pushing firmly as he did. At first there was almost no give. He kept pressing. Sweat dripped from his forehead, concentration wringing perspiration from him faster than a full-out sprint could have.

The plastic pushed through. An inch. Two. Three.

He pulled his foot right free.

He left his other foot bound in the matching circle. He could walk, and he didn’t think he had the time to work it free. The phantom cries were slamming into him.

He was free. Free enough.

Now he just had to get out of this boxcar.

And find his family.

12

Ken tried to orient himself for a few long moments before admitting it was useless. He had no idea where he was in relation to the walls of the car, no idea whether he was close to one of the sides of the car, one of the ends, or standing dead center.

He walked straight ahead. Sliding one foot after another. His rubber soles caught a bit, giving him a jerking gait that the cracking roll of the train exacerbated. The trailing edge of the cuff on his left ankle rasped on the floor.

His hands waved in front of him in the darkness. His toes tried to curl back with every step, as though possessed of their own intelligence and certain that they would hit something.

For all he knew, they might be right. There was no way of knowing if this car was empty or full, if he was alone in here or accompanied by some unseen cargo.

He kept walking. Sliding and rasping.

His left hand – always his left hand, dammit! – hit something. Hard and cold and unyielding.

A moment later his right hand hit the same thing.

And the boxcar moved again. This time there was no way to pawn it off as a normal event or even some small issue with the train. A vibration traveled through the entirety of the car, rattling Ken’s bones.

He felt something faraway.

give up….

give in….

“Dear God, please, no,” he whispered.

13

The cry had come to his mind, no sound to his ears. He might have imagined it, the same way he had been imagining the cries of his children.

But Ken didn’t think so.

He felt the cold metal under his palms. It vibrated in time with the tok-tok of the train’s wheels, the clacking of steel on steel. He thought it was one of the inside walls of the boxcar. He hoped so. He didn’t want to have to feel around some kind of shipping containers to find the sides of his cell.

He moved to the side. Feeling the metal inch by inch. He went as fast as he could without missing anything.  Sooner than he expected he hit a corner. He wondered if that meant he had been on the end of the car and was now rounding to one of the sides. No way to tell. If he was rounding to a side it was a good thing. If he had been on a side and was now moving to the end, he was wasting time.

He decided to keep on his course. There was no way of knowing what to do. When in doubt move forward.

He kept feeling along, feeling along. His mind began playing tricks on him, making it seem like the metal stretched forward an impossible distance under his hands. Like he was walking not feet or yards, but miles in the darkness.

Must have missed it.

Keep going.

Should have felt it by now.

Maybe it’s on the other side. Maybe I should walk to –

Just keep going!

Panic curled its way up his spine, threaded vines through his gut. The phantom screams of his children grew louder, and so did the others.

Give up….

Give in….

Louder now. Harder to pawn off as imagination.

He kept moving. His jaw quivered, though whether with terror or concentration he could not say. The two had merged into one animal.

He felt something under the fingers of his leading hand. Brought both hands together.

It was a long line in the steel wall. Still unseen, a seam that could have been a trick played by a mind that needed it to be there.

But he had heard Aaron leave. Had seen the light come in.

And he hadn’t heard a lock, had he? Had just heard the cowboy slide something open, then slide it shut.

The car thrummed under his feet.

Give up. Give in.

Ken pulled. There was nothing to hold onto, at least nothing that he could feel, and he was loath to leave the spot he had found. All he had was the friction of his palms.

He pulled again. The flesh felt like it was tearing off his hands.

The wall slid to the side.

A bright crack of light speared into the darkness. He was blind again, though for a different reason.

Then sight returned, and he almost wished it hadn’t. Sometimes it was better to be blind. Sometimes sight was a curse.

14

On their honeymoon in Kauai, Ken and Maggie had spent a lot of time on the ocean, and significantly more time in their hotel room.

They had also hiked a good deal of the island. One of the hikes had led them to Waimea Canyon.

Waimea Canyon stood out in Ken’s mind ever after as being exactly like the Grand Canyon in terms of size and magnificence. The only difference was that where the Grand Canyon was painted in sunset tones of oranges and yellows and pinks, Waimea was done primarily in tropical greens, with hints of red island soil peeking through. It was an awesome sight, full of life and seeming to stretch away forever, a crack in the land that extended until the low-hanging mists of the island swallowed it into a dream.

At one point, Ken became curious about how far down it actually was to the bottom of the canyon. He hopped a guardrail and, immune to Maggie’s concerns about becoming a widow on her honeymoon, leaned over a cliff and looked straight down.

Then, satisfied that it was every bit as high as he had thought it would be, he hopped back over the guardrail, into Maggie’s arms, and then they returned to the hotel room and did not come out for a good number of hours.

The heights hadn’t bothered him. Hundreds of feet, and he hadn’t blinked an eye.

Now he leaned out the side of the freight car and saw the ground only a few feet below him. It fell quickly away to a slope that dropped an additional five or six feet into a dry wash that could have been a riverbed at one time, and perhaps still was during the wettest parts of the year.

Only a few feet. And he felt like falling back into the womblike darkness from which he had just gone to so much trouble to escape.

To stare down an unmoving cliff, a piece of land that had been there tens of thousands of years and had trees that had taken root in its face: no problem. To look down and see the scrub sweep past, the dirt a blur below the train as it screamed over the tracks, to realize all at once the awesome weight of the train he stood on, and that if he fell beneath it the thing wouldn’t so much as lurch in recognition of his passing: a very big problem.

He felt like throwing up. Probably would if he didn’t wrench his gaze away from the land being chewed up beneath the passing cars.

Give up.

Give in.

The wordless shout was still there. Still getting stronger, bit by bit.

Ken looked straight ahead. He didn’t know where he was, didn’t recognize the land he was passing through. Not sure whether that meant they had been going for a long time, or if this was just a vantage point he had never had before: not often that he got to look at Idaho from the side of a speeding train.

The train wasn’t actually going that fast. Barely pulling ahead of the slow-moving thunderheads that dotted an otherwise bright sky. That made sense. The train he had seen for a few seconds before being ambushed by Aaron had been a freight train: a locomotive at the front that somehow managed to look both sleek and boxy, with a cab to the rear for the engineer and conductor, followed by two more locomotives with different body types. The center one was flatter; it looked like a squat box with another cab, this one toward the front, almost the whole thing surrounded by a walkway that extended a bit farther over past the rails than the other two engines did. The last one in line, the shortest engine, was a rounded thing that looked almost like what Ken pictured an old-fashioned caboose would have looked like. And the whole trio was trailed by a string of flatcars and boxcars that extended into the distance.

It was the kind of train that kept people cursing at crossings as it lumbered past for an eternity, so long it seemed to have been constructed less for hauling than simply to irritate commuters in a hurry to get to destinations in a busy world.

Ken wondered for a second if they would have been so upset when the trains passed if they had known how very quickly that world would end.

Probably. Because the world had moved fast, and the trains never did.

Still, “not very fast” when waiting for a train to pass at a railroad crossing meant a very different thing than “not very fast” when suspended from the side of that train. He wished it was going a bit slower. Zero mph would be good.

Give up.

Give in.

He jerked his head to the right. There was no sense of sound, but somehow he knew there was a direction to the noiseless imperative that was chipping away at the edges of his mind and will. It was coming from the rear of the train.

The train was going around a curve. He could only see the three boxcars behind him, then the train arced away into invisibility. If he had been on the other side of the boxcar he could have seen the entire length of the train. But here, almost nothing.

He looked to his left, toward the front of the train. Same problem. The curvature of the track seemed to pull the leading cars away from his view. He saw only two boxcars, then empty air in front of him. And no telling how long the track would curve like this, how long it would take for him to get an accurate idea what was going on behind him or even how close he was to the front of the train – where he assumed his family was.

And where he also assumed Aaron, Elijah, and Theresa waited. Deciding whether to kill his children or not.

He still didn’t understand that, and knew that now wasn’t the time to figure it out. Not with –

(Give up.

Give in.)

– danger coming closer. Not with his family threatened by both the zombies and the people they had viewed as friends.

What about Christopher? Buck?

Easy to answer: there was no way the young man would go along with any plan to kill the girls. And Buck would permit nothing to happen to Hope, especially. He had formed a bond with her, had become something akin to a favored uncle.

So that meant they were in trouble, too. Because Aaron wasn’t the type who would leave possible threats free to roam.

Ken looked for a way out of the boxcar. There were a few rungs on the side, a ladder leading to the top of the car. But they were well out of reach. A good ten or fifteen feet away from his perch.

He looked to the right, toward the back of the train. Nothing there. Not even the rungs that were to the front. Just the bare sides of the boxcar, painted a rust-red that brought to mind coagulating blood.

Ken looked back at the rungs. Too far to jump to.

Which meant only one way to get to them.

15

The boxcar door slid to the side on tracks anchored at the bottom and top of the car. The door itself was heavy-duty, metal like the rest of the car. It had slid only with effort – Ken’s palms still stung from the strain of getting the thing to move. Now it was open only about the width of Ken’s body.

He leaned into it. The door slid open toward the front of the train, and Ken forced it the rest of the way open. He shoved with his shoulder until he felt it hit the end of the track. Something clicked as a mechanism engaged that – he hoped – would keep the door locked at least semi-securely in place.

He leaned out and looked at the door.

The rest of the boxcar was smooth steel on the outside. Flat panels of metal broken only by vertical lines of rivets that extended from bottom to top of the car. The door was different. Corrugated, the waves of the metal extending horizontally. There was a single handle in the middle of the door – Ken presumed it was meant for loaders to open and close it when the cargo car pulled into the station. At the bottom of the door was the wheel mechanism, tucked into the track that extended about four inches off the side of the boxcar.

The entire thing – door, track, everything – extended to within maybe five feet of the ladder that crawled up the side of the boxcar. Maybe more. It was hard to tell from this angle.

Ken looked around again. Hoping he might have missed something. Knowing he hadn’t.

He grabbed the side of the door with his right hand. Then his left, ignoring the ache that always brought as best he could.

He slid his right foot out of the boxcar. Onto the track that the door used to slide back and forth.

Four inches wide.

16

Ken tried to convince himself that it was plenty of room. That four inches was the width of a parking curb. And hadn’t he walked on parking curbs as a kid all the time?

But you aren’t a kid anymore.

Also, you fell a lot.

He felt a grimace pucker his face as he slid his right foot farther out on the track, and then moved his left foot over to join it. Unsure if the grimace was one of disgust at the inner voice that sometimes seemed as determined an enemy as the zombies that had taken over the world, or one of terror at the fact that his heels were now suspended over nothing but air.

He reached with his right hand, feeling for the handle in the middle of the door. Couldn’t reach it. Not without letting go of the outer lip of the door with his left. And that meant he’d be clinging to the metal like a fly, no handholds whatever. Not long, probably, but when you were hanging to the side of a moving train with nothing to anchor you but hope and whatever prayers you could toss up to Heaven, any time was too long.

The train bucked again. Harder this time, and his right foot slid off the track, kicking back like he was executing a particularly strange dance move. He felt himself slide backward for a terrible moment, his left arm trying desperately to yank his center of gravity back over the track.

He grunted. Threw his right hand forward. It slapped the metal door so hard there was a clang and his wrist – already punished and bruised from his escape from the cuffs – shouted a rebuke.

But he swung back over the track. Pushed himself so hard against the metal that he felt like he might have the waves and troughs of the steel etched permanently in his face.

He had to move. Didn’t know when the next hit – whatever it was – would come. When the next bounce might just toss him off the side of the boxcar.

He looked at the handle. Still out of reach.

He let go of the door with his left hand. Holding onto nothing now. Just balanced on the track, both hands stretched wide along the outside of the door like he was trying to give the boxcar some strange bear hug.

He inched over. His lead foot kicked something. He faltered. Almost lost balance. Glanced down.

One of the wheel mechanisms.

He had to step over and around it. Lifting his foot and swinging it around the rods and pins that went into the steel wheel that sat in the track. They weren’t something he could grab onto, either: the entire apparatus was anchored about a foot above the track, so all it provided was a stumbling block.

He lifted his right foot. Now balanced on a single foot – his left foot, his left leg, the one that had hurt the most since he twisted his back – and kicked over the wheel mechanism. Slammed his foot back down on the track.

The return to the track almost did him in. He was too hurried, too scared. The motion was harder than it should have been, and he almost kicked right past the track, almost kicked himself right down the side of the train.

He caught himself with his lead foot a full six inches below the track. Frozen for a long moment. Then he raised it – more slowly, more controlled this time – and put it back on the track.

Another two slides.

And he reached the handle.

He lifted his left leg over the wheel mechanism. This time it was easier, since he had both hands wrapped in death-grips around the horizontal steel loop riveted to the side of the door.

He was at the center.

Halfway left to go.

Only there was no handle to reach for at the end of the second half. Just empty space.

17

Ken’s hands were bunched together on the handle of the sliding door. The handle – a steel loop about six or seven inches long – was not really designed for hanging off of. But to Ken it felt more comfortable than an easy chair. Convincing himself to let go was tougher than he would have thought it could be. Sweat slicked his fingers, but peeling them off the metal seemed to cause friction burns.

Just let go, Ken. Just –

GIVE UP.

GIVE IN.

He jerked. The sound wasn’t just in his mind this time. It was in the air around him, in his ears. The growl.

They were here.

The sound hadn’t been overwhelming. But the urge to let go, to drop below the train and let the wheels chew him up, was suddenly nearly overwhelming. Ken shut his eyes and leaned into the door of the train, whispering to himself. He didn’t even know what he was whispering until the moment passed, until the growl receded and with it the strength of the mandate to subsume himself in the will of the horde. Then he heard himself.

“Hope. Maggie. Liz. Hope. Maggie. Liz.”

The names of his children. His wife. The family that remained. They were the prayer he uttered, the only prayer that mattered. And Ken hoped that any God still looking down from the Heavens would hear those names and understand the world of hope and fear and pleading that each one implied.

The growl faded to nothing. Replaced by the ongoing tok-tok of the train’s passage over the rails. By Ken’s panting. The thunder of his pulse in his ears.

“Hope. Maggie. Liz.”

He didn’t know why Hope came first in the litany. Other than, perhaps, because her name was synonymous with the only weapon that truly remained to humanity in this time when the world had crumbled. All that was known had passed to nothing. There was nothing certain. Only hope remained.

Ken would find them.

He let go of the handle.

His right hand stretched along the side of the door. The ripples in the steel were deep – maybe two full inches. But the curvature of the metal was so smooth that there was nothing to grab in the winding troughs, no edge to hang onto on the sleek waves. They just created an irregular surface even more difficult to navigate than a flat siding would have been.

Ken slid his way out. Extending his right arm ahead and barely able to see it because his face was pressed so hard against the door.

His foot bumped the second wheel assembly. Ready for it this time but it still startled him. He lifted his foot off the track, over the mechanism. This time he managed to set it down more carefully and didn’t quite kick himself off the side of the train.

Now he was straddling the wheel apparatus. Right hand extended but not quite touching the end of the door, left hand still holding firm to the handle that felt like his only life-line in a very hostile world.

The life-line he now had to abandon.

He had gone as far as he could. He had to let go to get to the end of the door. To get to –

(Hope)

– where he needed to be.

His fingers uncurled. If the train rattled or lurched, he would fall. Nothing to hold onto. No anchor. Just him and the air.

He slid forward. His left foot hit the wheel mechanism. He slid it carefully – carefully – up and over the apparatus. Put it down on the track. Heels hanging over nothing. Ankles burning, calves on fire as lactic acid built up in them.

His legs started to shake. The urge to just move, just leap, was nearly overwhelming. His body wasn’t used to this kind of exercise, his muscles not prepared for this particular exertion.

He forced himself to continue slowly. Haste would mean a mistake. A mistake would mean death.

Inch by inch. Centimeter by centimeter.

The tip of his right forefinger touched the leading edge of the door.

His hand curled around it.

Safe.

And Ken finally allowed himself to look ahead. Anchored, comparatively secure, he permitted a glance at the next step.

The hardest was yet to come.

18

The rungs were right there. A track of steel leading from the bottom of the boxcar’s frame to the top, curving up over the roof. It looked solid enough to bear the weight of an elephant, let alone a medium-sized history teacher.

The only problem was distance.

Ken had guessed it was maybe five feet between the end of the track and the ladder. Not an impossible distance if you were talking about a standing long jump on a grassy field. Considerably more forbidding when the jump was over gravel and dirt and – oh, yes – several thousand tons of metal ready to grind you to pulp.

And he had to add to the difficulty the undeniable fact that it was well over five feet between his perch on the edge of the door track and those rungs that led to – whatever they led to. Maybe eight feet. No way he could jump that at the best times, in the best circumstances.

He looked around, seeking for a handhold, some spot he had missed. Anything that he could use to climb over or around this blank spot that represented the difference between going on and –

Give up.

He clutched the edge of the door and concentrated on not swaying as the growl floated over the top of the train like a noxious cloud. Still getting louder. He couldn’t tell how many of the zombies were making the noise. It was the living ones – the undead ones were silent, terribly silent – but he couldn’t discern if it was ten or fifty or five thousand. All he knew was that here, standing over a precipice as dangerous in its own way as any he had yet experienced, the call to lay down and surrender was much harder to resist.

Action was key, he realized. He abruptly remembered the people he had seen on their phones, falling prey to some insidious sound that had beckoned them to a despair so deep that they had no choice but to lay down and just… die. Hearts stopping in chests, minds blanking as they succumbed to the call to oblivion.

Ken himself had come within seconds of that fate. Maybe less.

Just like now. Only seconds before he became too paralyzed with fear to move. Seconds before the growl and its psychic attack added to the terror he was already feeling and his immobility and locked him forever in place. He would become a statue. Like Lot’s wife, who had become a pillar of salt when she looked upon the wicked city of Sodom. Only Ken was staring at his own fear, his own inability.

He couldn’t remain here. He had to move. Action was key. To live was to move, and motion was hope.

He turned to the rungs. Still too far to reach by jumping.

So he didn’t jump.

He just let himself fall.

19

Ken knew that anyone looking would have seen someone determined to die. A suicidal man bent on leaving a world that had become too hostile, too alien, to bear living in any longer.

But in the same moment that he pitched forward, in the same moment when he stared death in the face, Ken felt very much alive.

A strange clarity gripped him. His mind seemed to turn to glass, images appearing that he had long forgotten.

His grandfather, taking him up on the roof, showing him that if he stood with one foot on either side he could see the whole world….

His grandmother, baking sugar cookies with him and pretending not to notice when he stole more dough than she cooked….

A moment behind a friend’s house, his first kiss with a little girl when he was barely four and they promised to never tell and never did and then forgot about it because it was far too grown up and there were things to watch on television….

A million remembrances that passed through his mind, that passed in front of his eyes. The world had become clear. For one instant he lived only for the moment, and because he could define it he understood the sum of his existence and could fulfill its measure.

He was jumping. But not being pressed by anyone, not being hounded or led. This, he realized, was his first jump as his own man. He was making the decision. There was no Aaron, no Christopher, no Dorcas, no Buck, no anyone. Just him and his family. Him and his children. Him and an impossible leap to make.

He fell forward along the side of the train. Stretched out to his full length. A few inches shy of six feet tall, with hands that reached another foot beyond his head. Almost seven feet. Maybe all the way to seven.

Eight feet was too far to jump. But one? He could do that.

But that meant he had to wait. He fell in an arc, his fingers coming closer to the ladder with every inch his body fell forward. But his body – his head and trunk especially – also plummeted closer and closer to the ground, the rails, the wheels.

Tok-tok. Tok-tok. Tok-tok.

Give up. Give in.

Falling.

Inch by inch.

Wait. Wait. Don’t jump yet, Ken.

The memory of his first solo ride on a bike, the delirious exhilaration followed by the terrible terror as the short ride came to a crash and he was swept into his father’s arms….

The night he was so sick and his mother stayed up all night, rocking him and singing songs until she was hoarse….

Still falling.

Tok-tok. Tok-tok. Tok-tok.

Give up. Give in.

Falling.

Wait. Just wait. Just… wait….

NOW!

Ken pushed off. He was nearly horizontal, his body stretched out so close to a straight line that if he waited one more millisecond he would lose the ability to kick off the edge of the door track.

He shoved with everything he had. His right foot felt powerful, but his left leg shrieked and he buckled in mid-air.

His fingers stretched. Knocked into metal. Fell past the rung.

Past another.

Past them all.

20

The clarity was still with him.

Ken saw the last rung pass by his hand, his fingers just missing it. Saw his life ending, his children dying at Aaron’s hand. Maggie and Buck shot by Theresa. Christopher throttled into lifelessness by the huge and grinning Elijah.

He willed it not to be so. Refused it. Rejected it.

And a last chance appeared. As though the universe had heard his resolve and bent itself to his will.

The rungs ended. But there was a loop underneath them. Ken hadn’t noticed it: it was set back slightly, a few inches back from the edge of the boxcar. Indeed, there was no way he could have seen it from his vantage point clinging to the side of the boxcar.

Only by falling had he spotted it.

Not a rung on the ladder that ran up the side of the car. No, this was a larger loop. A stirrup-like piece of metal that was clearly meant as a step to help people get up the distance between the ground and the bottom of the car.

Ken’s arms flapped manically, moving so fast he could barely see them. He found time to wonder as he fell, to marvel at how fast a body could move when pressed by desperation. Not fear for self, but terror for the consequences of failure.

He couldn’t fail. Too much depended on him. He was a father, and fathers had to succeed for their families. It was the main job description.

His left hand clanged against the step and bounced off. The stumps of his fingers cried out. Ken ignored them.

His right hand swung out.

And caught.

The steel stirrup was hot under his skin. Sticky and slick at the same time, old grease and grime and his own sweat mixing to create a unique sensation. Ken thought it would resist his grip, but then he slapped his left hand against it and felt both hands lock around the metal.

But he was still falling.

His feet and knees hit the ground. Bouncing hard, his frame rattling and pulling inward. Toward the track.

Toward the wheels.

21

Ken had a friend once. A long time ago – before the world ended, before the universe stopped making sense. He had been a rock climber, and he took Ken with him to a climbing club. Ken didn’t know what to expect – a bunch of super-fit, good-looking people in vaguely hippie-looking clothes sitting around talking about Kilimanjaro and Everest and that time they punched a Sherpa, perhaps.

Instead, he entered a room that was full of a stunningly normal array of old and young, male and female. Most were fairly trim, but there were a few people who were on the stocky side, and none of them looked like either hippies or cover models.

Ken had been stunned at that for a few moments, until his friend leaped to the climbing wall that dominated the three-story warehouse. Then the focus of his shock shifted to the fact that his friend had apparently hidden from Ken his close family ties to Spider-Man. He flew up the side of the wall, hands and feet moving quick and sure.

At one point he was hanging from one small nub of rubber sticking out of the wall. Just two fingers and a thumb clamped around it and he looked down at Ken and laughed like it was no big deal.

Now, in the moment when Ken was hanging on to the stirrup below the boxcar, his feet and legs dragging closer to the train wheels like there was some invisible gravity well at the center of the tracks, he would have sold his soul to have that ability for a mere five seconds. To have that kind of finger strength, that kind of stickability.

But all he had was himself. A fairly fit history teacher. A man whose only hope for survival lay in the fact that he wasn’t surviving for himself, but for his family and the friends who had become like family.

He tried to kick his feet away from the bottom of the train, but it didn’t work. He moved them away for a second, but they just flew back, sucked in by whatever dark force was trying so desperately to kill him. He repeated the maneuver, but the same thing just happened again; and this time he almost kicked his grip loose of the stirrup.

He could only pull himself up. A pull-up from the worst possible starting point, and here there was no jeering jock to make fun of him if he didn’t manage to complete the exercise. No, just a quick fall – nothing more to hang onto this time – and then darkness.

He yanked upward. His body quivered, vibrating so rapidly he felt like he must be making musical tones. He was a single taut harp wire, every inch of him focused on the two hands that held the stirrup, on the wrists and arms that held him safe, on the biceps and back that pulled him up a fraction of an inch at a time.

His feet and knees kept dragging, bouncing, jouncing. A distracted part of his mind wondered how long his jeans and Doc Martens would hold out; how long before the gravel bit through the leather and denim and started to chew him to pieces.

No worries there, Ken. You’ll fall long before that happens. Small blessings.

He grunted and pulled himself up another centimeter. His knees stopped bouncing.

He reached up. Let go of the stirrup with his bad hand and made a lurching grab for the lowest rung on the side of the boxcar.

Made it.

No time to breathe. He kept pulling, ignoring the pain of ghost-fingers and severely over-taxed muscles. Let go with his right hand, his body almost dropping away for a gut-lurching instant before he managed to grab the lowest rung with his right hand as well.

His feet left the ground.

He hung for a long second. It felt like a vacation. A pause that was as welcome as any holiday he had ever experienced. No one trying to kill him, no imminent death to worry about.

Then the train lurched, the growl of hunters once-human oozed over the side. As though the cosmos had observed his complacence and was unwilling to let it pass unpunished.

Ken tried to pull his feet up to the stirrup but found he couldn’t. His stomach hurt too badly from being pummeled when he had bounced his wrist cuffs against it. When he pulled his legs up crooked rivers of pain cut deep beds through his core. He screamed and his legs fell slack of their own accord.

He had to do another pull-up. And another. Then he was high enough to put feet on the stirrup. To stand and be steady. To climb.

To see what lay ahead. And perhaps what hunted behind.

22

Ken pulled himself up to the top of the boxcar. The rungs of the ladder extended all the way to the top of the container and there was even an extra one jutting out at a forty-five degree angle a few inches into the top of the car.

Ken crawled up. His body still hurt, his muscles still quivered. But he felt strangely light. No one single subset of muscles being forced to bear his weight, they all seemed to be rejoicing and drawing on hidden reserves to push him up and over.

The train lurched once as he climbed. The growl came. Closer. Closer. But the call to surrender was, as he had suspected, slightly less powerful when he was moving.

Motion was action.

Action was the concrete manifestation of will.

And will was the defining characteristic of humanity; of the discipline and focus that both permitted simple survival and fomented the greatest leaps of knowledge and power.

Ken pulled himself up the last rung. He belly-crawled over the metal, his stomach twinging as the steel bit into it. But he didn’t pay it any mind, just kept wiggling forward.

The metal roof was hot under his belly. Not as hot as it could have been – he probably had those gray clouds that hung in the sky like badly-sewn patches on a sheet of blue cloth to thank for that – but still warmer than was comfortable.

There was a long strip of metal laying across the center of the boxcar’s roof. What was clearly meant as a walkway of sorts, though why anyone would want to be walking around up here under normal circumstances Ken couldn’t even begin to guess. That it was a design feature placed there in case of zombie apocalypse and the need to escape from homicidal ex-friends seemed unlikely.

At the center of the walkway was an outcropping, a bit of metal that served some arcane purpose for which Ken had no words. Tied to it was a coiled rope. No doubt the way Aaron had left. No suicidal jumps for him, just a simple climb. Or perhaps – given his bad hand – a more dangerous swing to the rungs. Still eminently doable for a man who seemed able to do anything life threw at him.

Ken wriggled to the walkway, then got his hands and knees solidly on it. Pointed toward the front of the train.

In movies people – heroes and villains alike – just stood and ran across train tops like it was nothing more than a jogging trail in the park. Ken didn’t see how that was possible – the boxcar seemed to sway enormously under him. He had no desire to stand. No desire to let go of the metal, or even to move.

But he couldn’t see the front of the train. Just the car ahead of him, which looked more or less the same as the one on which he now hunched. He had to see where he was going; how far until he could reach his friends and family.

Before, when dropping for the rungs, he had existed only for that moment. Now he had to look to the future. And just hope it wasn’t too daunting.

He stood. Slowly, carefully. The train rocked under him, but he found he could stand – though his legs remained in a half-crouch and wouldn’t straighten any further no matter how much he screamed at them to do so in his mind.

The train stretched away in front of him. A gentle curve swept it to the left. A half-dozen boxcars, then a few flatcars. Another dozen boxcars with a few dead spots interspersed that he assumed were more flatcars.

Then the locomotives. The three engines that provided the pushing power for a massive string of freight cars that might weigh ten thousand tons.

Ken had seen a configuration like that before; had even taken the kids to the Boise Train Station when one was on display there.

There were places the kids and Maggie could be, places friends and enemies could hide, in all three units.

For that matter, the kids could be in any of the boxcars. Could be impossible to find.

He threw that thought away. It wasn’t helpful, and it made what he had to do next impossible. Sometimes faith wasn’t a hope for something true, but rather a hope that what you feared wasn’t true.

Ken figured that Elijah had to be in the front engine. He had said – or implied – that he was the only one who could drive the train, so the front was the logical place for him.

Theresa, whose red hair and chubby face seemed deliberately at odds with the full-body riot gear she wore and the twin machetes she had once strapped across her back, could be anywhere. Ditto Aaron, who Ken suspected was more dangerous than either of them, even unarmed and hobbled by the injury to his left hand.

Ken wondered suddenly where Sally was. The snow leopard – a male, inexplicably named by his older daughter – had appeared out of nowhere with two others to save the group at a moment when every path appeared to end in doom. The other two predators had been lost, but Sally had stayed with them and more or less adopted Ken’s girls, especially little Lizzy. And not only did the big cat show no inclination to harm any of the group, but the girls seemed more –

(human)

– normal when Sally was close. More able to resist whatever invisible influence was working on them. Changing them to something different and frightening that seemed to align with the zombies at times more than with the surviving humans.

Where’s Sally?

Ken doubted that the big cat would have let anything happen to the girls – or by extension to Maggie. So Sally was probably dead.

Another loss.

He gauged how long it would take him to get to the locomotive unit.

No idea.

The same held true of how he was going to sneak up on a trio of armed and dangerous people, rescue his family, and get off the train.

The train shifted below his feet.

Ken had been unconsciously avoiding what was behind. He had to focus on what lay ahead; that almost seemed like enough and more than enough. As though if the universe were at all fair he should only have to focus on the objectives and obstacles he had already identified.

But the universe wasn’t fair.

He turned around.

Myriad words flew into his mind. None of them good. He almost said several, but heard Maggie scolding him. Not in front of the children, Ken.

He shifted the word to a more innocuous one. And it didn’t matter: there was no word strong enough to express what he was seeing.

“Crap.”

23

The train bounced underneath him again, as though to confirm what Ken was seeing. He wondered how many jounces like this it would take to derail the thing. Hopefully a lot.

Because a lot of jounces were coming.

The train stretched off into the distance behind him. When he had first seen the train he had been focused on what was right in front of him, not really looking on anything to the right or the left. He hadn’t had much time, either, before Aaron put a sleeper hold from Hell on him and the lights went out.

Now he gaped. Like everyone he knew he had been stuck at intersections while freight trains passed by. Every time he had gone to St. Luke’s in particular, there had seemed to be a train crossing at Eagle Blvd. that made him and his then-new bride perennially late to the Childbirth and Pregnancy Class they were taking.

The trains seemed to go on forever, minutes and minutes and sometimes hours and hours. But he had always assumed the perceived length was more a function of wanting to get to the class (and get his pregnant and constantly-needing-to-pee wife to a bathroom) than a reality of the train’s length.

He was wrong, though. Dreadfully wrong.

The train had perhaps two dozen cars ahead of him. And well over sixty behind him. Easily a half-mile of cars.

Like those he had already seen, the cars to the rear of the train were a mix of boxcars and flatcars. Some steel, some wood, some holding visible cargo, others seeming to be empty. All worn with use, all clearly workhorses of the line.

They were different colors: green, blue, yellow, red. A lot of primaries, but mostly browns and grays.

The last cars were black. And the black seemed to be dripping off the sides of those cars. Like they had been freshly painted before leaving the last station and were now raining wet paint in a steady stream behind them.

Only this river of black, this thick trail of darkness that fell from the last half dozen cars and ran unbroken into a thick wooded area, was moving. Not like water, in confined rivulets held together by gravity and surface tension and the vagaries of the land over which it ran.

This river ran in a flowing mass composed of thousands of droplets that were each unique, each unbound to the other by physical ties, but somehow aware. Somehow shifting around one another without ever getting in the way, without ever interfering with one another.

The zombies had found them.

And they were on the train.

24

Ken’s first thought – not one he liked, but one that came nevertheless – was that they were doomed. The things were fast. Faster than people, faster than any human could run.

And if they were faster than the train, then there was no possible way to escape. Their only hope of freedom lay in flight and evasion. But they had been found, and the zombies were faster than the vehicle that Ken and his family rode.

He watched for a moment. Not gripped by panic, but by a cold certainty. He had to find a way out of this, and if there was no way for him, then he had to find a way for his family.

The zombies came out of the woods in a dark, tightly-packed group that reminded Ken of a trail of ants moving toward a piece of discarded food at a picnic. When he had seen them last in any great numbers there had been so many they had coated entire buildings, jammed together so tightly they resembled less a group of manic creatures than the oversized cells of a single malevolent monster.

Here, they were a bit looser. Still running closer and more fluidly than any fully human group could possibly do. But there was space between them, gaps as they ran and as they leaped to the back boxcars.

There was something important here. Perhaps something he could use. If he stayed alive long enough to ponder it. To figure it out.

He watched a bit longer. The back six cars had disappeared, and the growl –

(Give UP.

Give IN.)

– was constant. Especially now that he was standing. And the longer he stood still the stronger it became. The more insistent the hammer and chisel that chipped away at the self-centers of him mind.

Ken moved.

His body and a large part of his mind were screaming to run. To dash toward the front of the train, to find Maggie, his children. To die with the ones he loved.

And if that were truly the choice, perhaps he could have done it.

But death waited for none of them. Only the Change. The Change and, for his children, perhaps something far more alien and terrifying.

So he walked toward the zombies.

Seven – no, eight – cars covered in darkness now. The train was being swallowed by a creature that reached a tentacle from the woods and gulped it down whole.

Nine cars.

Ken kept walking. He shifted his focus away from the disappearing cars. Tried to ignore the rocking that was steadily worsening under his feet. His knees bent to adjust to the motion, and the less he thought of it the better he walked.

Ten cars.

He looked at the trail of creatures.

They were running faster than the train. Leaping up to hold not to the sides of the boxcars, but to their brothers and sisters, who clung to the train like spiders. Then they clambered over and forward and more came to take their place.

More of the ones who were running. Running faster than the train.

But only just.

A plan started to play in Ken’s brain.

He at last allowed himself to turn and run.

25

After only a few steps, Ken realized that “run” was a term that could only be applied to what he was doing in the very loosest sense.

The boxcar – the entire train – was rippling like a snapped bullwhip under his feet as more and more of the creatures climbed aboard behind him. He could only take a few steps at a time, then he had to stop and regain his balance.

Still, he got to the forward end of the boxcar without falling off. Strangely proud, then strangely ashamed at being proud at this point. His family and world were still in grave danger, so wasting a single neuron on excitement over making it across the top of the car seemed wrong somehow.

The next boxcar was the same as this one. And both had ladders, not only on their sides but on their ends. The only problem was that the ladders didn’t mirror each other. The ladder on the front of Ken’s boxcar was down and to his left, the other had a ladder off to the right. He would have to go down, cross the linkage between the two cars, reaching across empty space since he could see he wouldn’t be able to hold onto both ladders at once, and hope not to fall.

He might have taken the safe route if the ladders had been closer.

As it was….

What the hell.

Ken, language!

The second voice in his mind belonged to Maggie, and even now, in this moment it made him smile. The grin had to force its way out through an expression tight and grim. But it glimmered through, and brought strength to Ken’s legs as he backed up ten feet. Far enough to get up speed, not so far that the train could buck him of.

He hoped.

He turned back to the front. Ran. One step. Two. Three.

Then a jump.

The gap between cars looked like it was about four feet. And Ken reminded himself in the middle of the jump that he’d already thrown himself across an eight-foot gap with only a four-inch launching pad. This should be no problem.

He hit squarely in the center of the steel walkway atop the next boxcar. Feet under him, hands in front in a perfect four-point landing. The impact made his teeth clack together. His front tooth – the one he’d already lost once and shoved back in, more out of a dazed sense of possession than anything – bounced out. It clicked across the top of the boxcar and off to the side. Ken had a wild instant in which he almost lunged after it.

Let it go, man. Maggie will just have to learn to love Hillbilly Ken.

He stood again. Ran forward. It went even better this time. Maybe he was getting his sea-legs.

Train-legs, Ken. Get the terminology right. Don’t use the end of the world as an excuse for lazy language.

Then the train rocked violently. He almost went over. Grabbed the lip of the walkway. Teetered. Righted himself. Continued forward. Didn’t look back.

Nothing back there to see. You already know what’s there. Focus forward. Focus on the job.

He reached the end of this boxcar and readied himself to jump again. Backed up the few steps. Took a quick breath. Ran.

And stopped the instant before he jumped.

26

The next boxcar was different.

It had no center strip of steel, no visible stretch that, if not designed for it, would at least be serviceable as a path for Ken to walk across. That meant there was nothing for him to hang onto, either: the walkway he was on now had a lip he had used to grip when he had almost fallen off before. The boxcar ahead of him had no such minute safety features. Indeed, the top of the car was a gentle curve. Nothing too steep, nothing too serious on a train that was at a dead standstill. But when jumping across a moving behemoth being shaken by the crowding throngs of a zombie horde… everything – everything – got much trickier.

The space between the cars was only a few feet, once again. Not an interminable gap under almost any other circumstances.

There were no ladders on the back of the next boxcar. Nothing at all that he could hope to use to transfer across in a safer manner.

He had to jump.

He backed up again.

Ran.

Leaped.

He hit the roof of the boxcar and fell forward as his left leg collapsed under him. The pins and needles of pain that were ever-present in that limb exploded into spikes of agony.

Ken tried to control the fall, to roll forward like he had been taught in countless hapkido classes. He tucked his head under and hit his right shoulder on the metal roof. Another bruise to go with the grape tones of the rest of his body.

He rolled. Went over his back. Feet somersaulting forward. Saw the edge of the boxcar rushing at him.

He couldn’t stop. He managed to flip over, going to belly and chest, arms and hands spread wide to gain as much traction as possible. The curve of the roof resisted purchase and he kept sliding. There were small grooves in the roof, but nothing deep enough for his scrabbling fingers to grip, no depression that would allow him to wedge a hand or a toe in and arrest his fall.

His feet, kicking for purchase, abruptly kicked into void as his legs went over the side.

27

Ken was sure that gravity would pitch him over. But fate – so often a vengeful scourge of late – seemed at last to come to his aid. The train was rocked as another group of zombies no doubt boarded it en masse, and the sudden bounce pounded Ken upward a fraction of an inch, giving him just enough time to slow his fall.

He was still hanging partially over the edge of the boxcar, his lower legs dangling into nothing. But he was alive.

He wiggled forward like a worm. Sliding forward until he was on the top of the boxcar, only his feet hanging out. Then on hands and knees again.

The metal was solid under him. The boxcar felt sturdy. Heavy. Immovable. It wouldn’t have minded if he fell, wouldn’t have noticed when he was plowed to tiny pieces beneath him.

Ken’s brow furrowed.

The train had bucked. Not once, but repeatedly. And that made no sense. The great length of rail cars, the three locomotives at the lead, had to weigh many thousands of tons. And there hadn’t been nearly enough zombies to cause something that size to shift. He had seen creatures in the hundreds, perhaps as many as one or two thousand.

But not enough to bounce the train. Not enough to cause it to shimmy the way it was doing now.

Ken stood and looked back.

The things were gaining. Maybe twenty cars looked like they had black bugs crawling over them. That put forty or so between them and Ken. He had to hurry. But first… he had to figure out what was happening with the train.

He looked a moment longer, but could see nothing.

Nothing on the top of the train.

He dropped back down to hands and knees, then to his stomach, and wiggled to the same edge he had just tried so hard to avoid. Poked his head over the side and looked down the length of the train.

It turned out that only about nine out of ten of the creatures were actually moving forward.

The rest were doing something else. Possibly something worse.

28

As Ken watched, a trio of the zombies clinging to the closest boxcar crawled down the side of the car. They didn’t bother holding onto any of the small handholds that Ken had had to navigate, and this no longer surprised him. The things had been changing constantly since they first –

(took over)

– appeared, and one of the changes had been an apparent ability to hold to surfaces without benefit of hand- or footholds. Ken didn’t know if all of them had this strange ability, but the three he saw now were clinging like flies to the side of the boxcar, skittering down headfirst so fast they looked like they were sliding as much as crawling.

When they got to the end of the car, they leaned under it. Coughed.

Ken had seen the things vomit like this before. Had seen the black that splashed out of their mouths and knew what to expect. He could imagine the hiss as it spewed from their mouths, the angry whisper of acid as it splashed on the tracks.

They were trying to derail the train. That was what Ken had been feeling: not the impact of the zombies leaping aboard, but the train jittering as wheels tore over tracks that were melting and losing their strength.

Then, as Ken watched, the trio that had vomited the dark dissolvent started to jerk. Vibrations turned to thrashing. They slammed their trunks against the side of the boxcar. Against each other.

One fell. The train pulled it under.

Another reared up, and Ken saw that it had been driven mad. The zombies lost whatever drive impelled them to attack only humans whenever they suffered serious head injury, and this one now had only half its head. The other half was a smoking ruin, a crater that Ken could see even at this distance.

It had melted itself.

Ken realized he had never seen the aftermath of a zombie’s secretion of this acid. Too busy running, fleeing, trying to stay alive.

Another one of the zombies fell.

The third didn’t fall. But nor did it remain on the train. A group of five or six other zombies swarmed over the side of the train and, lightning fast, threw their once-brother over the side.

Gone.

Ken was stunned at this new revelation. The zombies weren’t immune to the acid they made. And these had… if not died, then at least been put out of commission by the very act of destruction they visited on the tracks.

Was it always like this? Was it like bees, who died once they stung, each vengeance a suicide? Or was it just that they had been hanging upside down and so the acid had dripped over their heads?

More important, perhaps, was the attack by the others. They recognized the threat and acted to end it.

Smarter. Every day, every minute, the things were getting smarter.

Ken felt like a clock was ticking. Whatever edge humanity might have, whatever hope for survival, lay in its intelligence.

But what if the things got too much smarter? What if they caught up to people? What if they surpassed them?

The train bucked again. More zombies vomited acid, more went insane, more dropped off or were thrown under the tracks by the others. Each shudder was greater than the one before, each ripple through the train brought more danger of derailment.

The clock was ticking. In more ways than one.

29

Ken stumble-ran across the top of the boxcar. The next one was a cakewalk, so easy it was almost a joke. It was a flatcar, an empty bed that swayed slightly with the shift of the wheels as they passed over the tracks, but other than that it was just a big flat slab about ten feet below him.

There was a bad moment when he was gauging the best way to jump those ten feet. He didn’t want to hit and break a leg or an ankle, and he didn’t think his bad left leg would bear him up from that height. But landing and rolling was an equally bad call. The flatcar was just that – flat – but he still didn’t relish the idea of somersaulting right off the side. There would be absolutely nothing to stop his fall in that case – no handholds, no ladder rungs. Just a short drop to the ground where he would either be ground under the train or swarmed by the following horde.

He glanced down, almost absently, and realized he wouldn’t have to jump and land flat or roll. There had been no ladder on the back of the boxcar, but the front wall had a neat line of rungs hanging off it near the top of the car.

He lowered himself quickly, taking the rungs as fast as was safe. He needed to get to the front of the train. Not just to deal with the people threatening his family, but because they had to outrun the zombies. Impossible now, trailing close to a hundred cars.

But what if he could release the back ones? What if he could find a way to separate the locomotive from everything else? He wasn’t an expert, but he figured the train would be able to go a lot faster.

Fast enough to outrun the zombies?

He hoped so.

But he wouldn’t find out if they caught him first. Or if they sufficiently weakened the rails with their acid to derail the train. Or if the growl that still hammered at him finally overrode his will and rendered him helpless to act.

So many ways to die. So few to live.

He jumped off the ladder before reaching the bottom rung. A chancy move given the state of his left leg and his body in general, but he figured he needed every fraction of a second.

Ken landed on the wood-clad steel top of the flatcar. It whumped solidly, making him feel like he was on secure footing for the first time in what seemed like hours. His left leg spasmed, but only enough to remind him it was in a bad mood generally. An irritation, not a crippling moment.

He ran forward, tromping over the flatcar as fast as he could. He urged himself to greater speed, but the reserves were gone. He was at max speed given all he had been through. And he figured that even being upright at this point was a huge accomplishment.

Pat your back later, Ken. After you’ve saved Maggie and the kids.

Yeah, like you saved Derek?

He almost stumbled then, the look in Derek’s eyes when he had been bitten suddenly all he could see. The train disappeared for an instant and all he saw was a black-white beast clamping its teeth on his son’s flesh, his son’s skin seeming to burst as blood oozed from all his pores.

Derek had sacrificed everything to save his mother.

Ken had a good example – the best – to follow.

He forced the vision away. Not banishing it, just pushing it to the side so he could deal with the world around him. But he also held it close, so he could remember what his son had done. The love he had held for all of them.

Derek had never hesitated. Nine years old and he had leaped into the arms of a monster to save his family.

Could Ken do any less?

“I’m coming, Derek,” he whispered as he ran. Barely aware he said it, but knowing it wasn’t a promise of death but of life. He was going to do his best to approach his child in bravery, in goodness, in love.

He would sacrifice anything necessary, but like Derek had done he would save Maggie and the girls.

“I’m coming.”

The next boxcar was bouncing a bit, like one of its wheels was uneven. Still, Ken never hesitated as he ran and then jumped across the divide between the two cars. He caught the ladder that ran up the middle of the green boxcar. Climbed up hand over hand, moving fast, moving sure.

He put his head over the top. Hand on the roof. Pulled himself halfway up.

And before he had a chance to see anything, he felt a hand grab his ankle. Heard a familiar voice.

“Hello, Ken,” said Aaron. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to keep your hands and arms inside until the ride’s come to a complete stop?”

30

Ken didn’t react. He acted. A pair of thoughts flew into his mind:

He wants to kill my kids.

He won’t.

His foot flashed out. A perfect back kick in spite of the awkward angle of his body. His old hapkido teacher would have been proud.

Aaron had one foot on the coupler that held the boxcar to the flatcar. The other stretched to the lowest rung of the ladder that Ken was still on. The cowboy’s good hand was hanging onto Ken’s leg, his bad hand and arm looped around the rung below Ken’s foot.

Ken’s foot hit Aaron in the side of the head. The cowboy looked startled more than hurt. He weaved a bit, but managed not to let go of the ladder or Ken’s leg.

Ken drew back for another kick, but Aaron shook him. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do that again.”

The growl rose in volume at that moment, as though the zombies were agreeing, angered that Ken had attacked the older man. It just made him angry. He kicked.

Aaron let go. Punched and re-grabbed in the same motion. Ken’s leg went dead from the knee down. He bit back a scream.

“I can do it to the other side, too,” said Aaron. He was calm as ever. “But that’d make it hard for you to keep walking.” He waited a moment. The growl got louder. “Not being able to walk would be inconvenient right about now.”

Ken nodded. He hobble-stepped the rest of the way up the ladder, over the lip of the boxcar’s roof. Hard to do with his leg half-numb. Harder to do when Aaron still had a good grip on his calf.

“Where the hell’d you come from?” he snapped.

“Went down to find out what was going on with the train,” said Aaron. He chuckled. A sound without mirth. “Decided I’d better drop some of the cars.”

“That won’t work. You’ll have to drop all of them.”

“You a train expert?”

“No.” Ken managed to stand. His leg felt like it was all pins and needles – most of them dipped in battery acid – but it worked again. He moved away from Aaron, worried the cowboy would sucker-punch him or attack him from behind again. Not that he could stop the man if he decided to hit him from the front, either. “It just seems like the things are going fast and –“

“Relax. I agree. That’s why I went back to get you before heading to the engine.” He laughed again, and this time it seemed genuine. “Imagine my surprise when I found you gone.” He looked at the bit of plastic cuff still trailing from one of Ken’s ankles. “You’ll have to tell me how you did that.”

“Why? So you can tie me up better next time?”

Aaron ignored the comment. “After you,” he said, and gestured.

“You want me to go in front of you?”

“That’s right.”

“Last time I did that you choked me to unconsciousness.”

“Fine. Let’s just stay here arguing about it until the zombies come and take over the train.”

Ken looked over Aaron’s head. The zombies had taken over twenty cars. Twenty-five.

“You go first.”

Aaron sighed. “I know where your kids are.”

Ken shook his head. “You go first. And I’m sure you’ll take me there eventually. You want my help. That’s why you were talking to me in the first place.”

The cowboy let loose an exasperated sigh. But he turned and ran ahead of Ken.

A moment later Ken followed. The growl oozed after them, a miasma that thickened the air around it.

Ken barely noticed.

He had managed to kick Aaron. Hadn’t beaten him, but even touching the cowboy felt like a victory.

More important, he was moving toward his family.

31

Following Aaron across a moving train was a surreal experience. The man had to be in his fifties, but he moved like a teenager. A teenager who was half monkey.

Ken was hard-pressed to keep up as the older man pounded across car after car. Aaron’s cowboy boots clanked across each roof, he leaped to another without pause or thought, and then looked back each time his boots came down on the next roof. Ken told himself Aaron was just checking on the zombies’ progress, but he knew it was really just to check on him; to make sure that he was keeping up.

Holy crap, I’m chasing a man twice my age across the top of a train… and I’m having trouble keeping pace.

Aaron jumped off the top of a boxcar and disappeared, falling into the dip created by another flatcar.

Oh, hell no.

But he didn’t have a choice. Ken had the luxury of moving carefully before, but not now.

It wasn’t a question of pride. He was utterly out of that. Pride was something from the old days, something important when what you had to worry about was whether your clothes or your car measured up to what everyone else had. Keeping up with the Joneses was less important when all the Joneses – and Smiths and Browns and just about everyone else – was either dead or running around trying to make everyone dead.

So no, not pride. But he didn’t trust Aaron out of his sight. What if Aaron got ahead of him and then decided his plans would go easier without Ken and detached the part of the train Ken was still on?

So when he got to the end of the boxcar, he jumped as well. He hit the flatcar – another long, wood-covered surface that looked solid but rolled and bounced like it sat on a bed of hyperactive springs – and rolled. A pair of hands grabbed him before he finished the roll and hauled him to his feet.

“Nice,” grunted Aaron, and then he was off again.

They hopped across two more gaps, traversed two more flatcars. Then they hit a boxcar that had no rungs, no way to climb up. Nor were there visible handholds or even a lip around the side. No way past it.

Aaron didn’t look nonplused. Just turned to Ken and said, “This is going to take a bit of care.” His tone of voice was as even as ever.

“What is?”

Aaron moved his hands.

Ken gawked. “You’re not serious.”

32

Aaron nodded, but Ken still had trouble believing it. Not until Aaron’s jaw clenched and he said, “Move, dammit!” did it really penetrate that the other man was serious.

Ken looked at the cowboy’s cupped hands. At the top of the boxcar a good ten feet away. Back at the hands.

“You want me to jump?” Ken said it more to himself than anything. An affirmation of the ridiculousness of the moment.

Aaron answered anyway. “Unless you want to be the tosser and I’ll jump. But you didn’t trust me to go first before, so I figured you’d prefer it this way.”

“Isn’t –“

“No, there ain’t. And we don’t have a lot of time for jawing.”

Ken knew he was right. He knew the other man was insane for even having this idea. He knew he was insane for backing up a few steps. Pitching himself forward as fast as he could.

He raced at Aaron. Pushed off. The older man grunted as Ken’s foot fell into the stirrup Aaron had created of his hands. It had to have hurt the cowboy terribly, the fingers had been broken and the thumb dislocated only a few days before. Ken had no doubt he would have been screaming if the tables had turned.

Aaron: just a grunt. So low it was almost inaudible. A reminder that this was a man you definitely did not want to meet in a dark alley. Or even a bright one. Anywhere at all, in fact, where the guy might want to pound you.

And Ken was going to have to get the drop on him, sooner or later. Because the man who had been – and, he sensed, in many ways still was – his friend now wanted to kill his children.

Then he was airborne as Aaron flung him up and forward. Ken lurched sideways as he made his short flight, and in the moment he took trying to right himself he almost forgot to grab the top of the boxcar.

What if there’s nothing to grab?

Maybe that’s why Aaron really sent you first.

But there was something. A rail around the top of the boxcar that Ken’s hands slapped against and gripped reflexively.

He pulled himself up. Looked down.

Aaron was already halfway across the coupler between the trains. Standing on the knuckle that joined the two cars. Staring upward, good right hand reaching up.

“Come on,” he said. His hand waved back and forth, motioning for Ken to hurry. “Let’s go.”

And Ken just looked at him.

33

Ken didn’t turn away. Not because he didn’t want to – he did – but because he didn’t have the luxury of anger. Rage and revenge were things that stood in the way of life; of the struggle to survive.

He made a choice. Not based on his gut, but his mind.

Aaron wanted to hurt his kids. But he knew where they were. And Ken needed that knowledge. Besides, he hadn’t said he was going to kill them, had he? Only that he “might have to” kill them.

What did that mean?

Ken didn’t want to know. But he had to find out.

Because his girls were changing.  And what if –

(what if they’re the enemy what if they’re the monsters what if they’re the disease we’re carrying with us now?)

– Aaron knew something that would help him stop it? Help him turn back the clock on whatever was going on with Lizzy and Hope?

The easy way would be to just let Aaron die. But it wouldn’t be the good way, or even the right way.

He dropped to his stomach. Hung out over the edge of the boxcar. Put his good hand down. Grabbed Aaron’s. But before he pulled the cowboy up he said, “Remember this.”

He didn’t know exactly what he meant by that. Remember that I had you in my power, perhaps. Remember that I was merciful when you were not.

Remember that we, together, are human. Are all that remains of the Once that Once Was.

Ken pulled, Aaron pulled, and then the cowboy was up on the roof with him in an instant.

Ken looked ahead. They had run a surprising distance. Only maybe ten cars left to the rear locomotive.

He looked behind.

Fifty cars covered with writhing bodies. A seething mass of darkness, night falling one car at a time.

More and more of the zombies dropped off the sides, more and more of them vomited acid on rails and then died of the wounds the secretions caused.

In his headlong flight with Aaron, Ken hadn’t noticed the increased bouncing, but now he did. Standing still he felt the vibrations of the train as more and more of it passed over rails eaten away by acid, stripped of their strength by the destructive power of the things’ excretions.

The wobbling seemed to ripple back, getting worse the farther back it went. The first cars the things were on had just a bit of bounce to them, then more and more. The last train cars seemed to be rocking to some unheard music. A terrible tune thought up by an insane composer who only wished his audience to feel the same madness he suffered.

It couldn’t be much longer before those last cars fell. Derailed. And brought down the rest of the train with them.

The boxcar Ken stood on jittered beneath him. A noise like gears grinding a mixture of glass and bent steel screeched out.

Ken looked at Aaron. The cowboy’s face was impassive, but there was a hard edge to his jaw, a subtle clench visible under his gray-flecked beard.

They gazed at one another for an instant. Not even a second, but it seemed long, Ken felt like he was looking at Aaron because he wanted to memorize the last face he would ever see. He wondered if Aaron was feeling the same thing. Brotherhood imposed by circumstance, if not by choice.

Then they looked back. Both their heads moving as one, a coordinated movement that could have been rehearsed.

The back of the train.

It was far behind them, but still visible as a black line in the distance. A line that suddenly twitched. Whipped to one side, then the other.

The last cars tipped.

Fell off the rails.

34

“Down!” Ken screamed. He pushed Aaron to the roof, both of them going down in a tangle. He barely had time to grab the rail he had used to pull himself up before a vibration rolled through the boxcar. He felt it pummel his chest and legs. The hand gripping the bar felt hot. Fevered, if it was possible to have a single body part be fevered.

Why not? All bets on the impossible are off, Kenny.

Aaron started to slide away. Ken grabbed his arm. Aaron’s good hand gripped him at the same time, arresting his sideways fall. They hung to one another, Ken bearing the full weight of Aaron’s body for a moment. Then the cowboy wedged a boot against a rail and his slide stopped. Now he was supporting Ken as much as Ken was supporting him. Tangled in a strange embrace where Ken was unsure who was helping whom, just as he was unsure whether they were friends or enemies.

Maybe something else. Something new in a new world.

The train bucked again. Not the boxcar below them, but he felt the back cars flinging sideways like the tracks had been a prison and they were at last free to run wild.

Ken heard three words in his mind. Over and over, and he clung to them tighter than he clung to Aaron and Aaron clung to him.

Hatfield rail crash. Hatfield rail crash. Hatfield rail crash.

Aaron grunted. Ken couldn’t tell if it was pain or effort. He felt like patting the older man on the shoulder. Letting him know they had a chance.

No, no chance. The train’s derailing.

You know there’s a chance.

The vibrations worsened. Ken’s teeth rattled together. The back of his head – which had already been concussed, lacerated, burned – now bounced off the boxcar roof.

He felt himself slip into semi-darkness. Pulled himself back to full consciousness, using those same three words as a rope.

Hatfield rail crash.

Hatfield rail crash.

Hatfield rail –

The sound of the train derailing in sections behind them got so loud that Ken could no longer hear himself think. There was only an aural cliff that he had been pitched over the side of. And now he was falling past a sheer wall of sound that just grew louder and louder. Metal designed to stand up to millions of pounds of pressure shrieking as it was torn like tissue. Wheels of heavy steel separating from axles and then shattering into shrapnel.

Hatf –

The sound grew. Grew. Closer.

Ken held to the three words.

Even though he couldn’t hear them, even in his mind, he held to them. They were hope.

Hope was silent. But even silent, that did not always mean it was gone.

He screamed as loud as he could, this time saying the words aloud.

“HATFIELD RAIL –“

Then their car tipped to the side as well.

35

Mormons were everywhere in Boise.

It wasn’t an exaggeration or a condemnation, it was just a fact. Members of the Latter-day Saint church comprised about one in three people in the area. And, truth be told, Ken rather liked it that way. The LDS kids were less likely to turn up at class stoned, hungover, or “accidentally pregnant” (no kids, he had learned early, ever showed up and said they were “purposely pregnant”). Not that all LDS kids were angels – they weren’t – but they did have a lower tendency to cause trouble on average.

A result of this demographic makeup was that there was a lot of media coverage given to All Things Mormon. If an LDS church leader did something noteworthy, you could bet it would be covered at six p.m. on KBOI or KTVB – network affiliates who wouldn’t have given such items even a ten-second spot in areas like Los Angeles or New York.

So when a pair of Mormon missionaries in England were on a train that derailed, it was big news. Bigger still because one of the missionaries was actually from Caldwell, only about half an hour from Boise.

“The Hatfield rail crash” got coverage on TV, radio, newspapers. For weeks it was all anyone could talk about – either the “miracle” that the two young men hadn’t been killed, the fascinating details of the crash, or (in the case of a few very strange and bitter people Ken knew) whispered accusations that it was all part of a Mormon Conspiracy to bring down rail traffic in Europe.

The train was going almost one hundred-twenty miles per hour when a section of the track gave way. The back cars derailed completely, breaking into three sections as they skidded away from the rails.

But in the entire length, only four people were killed. Seventy injured, but only four died.

That was one of the things Ken tried to fix in his mind as the boxcar tilted beneath him. He heard screaming, wondered for a moment if it was Aaron.

No, Aaron doesn’t scream. Must be me.

The boxcar tilted so far to one side that Ken was certain it was going to slide sideways – either roll completely to its side or at the very least jump the tracks and gash twin furrows in the ground as the wheels went from solid track to comparatively soft ground.

Then the car slammed back the way it had come, bouncing Ken’s head against the metal again. Showers of sparks flew, and he couldn’t be sure if they were real or just something his brain was creating as a sort of mute protest to everything it had been forced to deal with of late.

The sound – the grating, shearing sound of train cars separating and metal being torn asunder – rose. Shifted. Now the high-pitched whine of air –

(Automatic air brakes?)

– mingled with the even higher scream of steel dragging on steel. The thud-thump-thuds that had been bouncing Ken and Aaron only a fraction of an instant before smoothed out.

Slowed.

Ken held to the fact that only four people had been killed in the Hatfield rail crash.

Held to that, and to one other thing.

The train slowed. He could feel it hitching to a stop below him, gears grinding from somewhere ahead. Brakes engaged sporadically up and down what was left of the line.

The train slowed.

Stopped.

Ken wanted to lay there. Just lay there and stare into the sky that was somehow untouched by what had happened.

But he didn’t have the time. He had to see if this was another Hatfield.

He sat up. Groaned. But didn’t let himself shut his eyes or even wince.

He had to see.

36

If this had been anything other than a freight train, already weighed down by a half-mile of cars and who-knew how much cargo, Ken figured he would already have died. If they’d been going much faster than they had been, he and Aaron no doubt would have been flung off the top of the boxcar when the train derailed. And then they would have hit the graveled ground on either side of the tracks, suffered lacerations and abrasions and broken bones that would have killed them quickly if not instantly.

So it was a blessing that he could sit up at all.

That was he told himself.

But it sounded false. Hard to believe when he managed to sit up and take stock of the destruction behind them.

The train was a mile-long range of twisted metal and shattered cargo. Some of the closer cars had broken open and spilled contents all around the now-warped tracks. Ken saw what looked like grain spilling out of one boxcar, silver boxes that might have once been electronics scattered around another.

One of the cars – a cylindrical length of steel – had split open and was very clearly leaking some kind of dark fluid. Ken couldn’t tell at this distance what it was – could have been molasses or corn oil or some kind of radioactive explosive waste for all he knew.

Besides, the threat wasn’t explosion or irradiation. It was still what it had been from the beginning of this nightmare: the zombies.

Like the boxcars, many had been thrown from their perches and now lay along the tracks in broken piles.

Unlike the boxcars, many had managed to maintain their grips. Had held to cars that slid and slipped from tracks to terrain. And now they growled as one and leaped toward the front of the now-still train.

Even the zombies who lay in shattered heaps were moving. Ken knew what he’d see if he was closer: creatures walking on arms and legs that ended in stumps, pushing themselves forward in spite of bodies whose every bone had been shattered.

And in another moment, if they kept doing as they had –

(no guarantee of that they keep changing so who knows what’s next)

– a waxy yellow substance would start oozing out of their wounds, hardening around injured areas. It acted, so much as Ken could tell, as both cast and some kind of healing salve. Only one that put things to right in seconds instead of weeks or years. He hadn’t seen stumps grow new hands or feet, but he had seen shattered limbs straighten and regain strength in moments.

Some of the things could be seen vomiting on themselves and others: more of that yellow crap coming out of their mouths as though they were medics moving around the wounded on a battle field.

The zombies had mobilized.

And the train – the one thing that had kept the survivors ahead of death, if only for a few extra minutes – was stopped.

Ken turned around.

Please let it be like Hatfield.

37

The Hatfield rail crash had been a surprise for Ken. Not because of the severity of the crash; not because of the news coverage a British passenger train got in Boise, Idaho; not even because it turned out a Mormon missionary from Caldwell had been sitting in the front passenger car.

No, what surprised him most was watching the after-crash reports.

He had always heard things like “the train derailed” on news reports and assumed that meant the entire vehicle length left the tracks. Certainly most news anchors stood in front of smoking hulks of wreckage splayed brokenly to the left and right of tracks that stood mute and unused.

But with the Hatfield line, only about the last two-thirds of the train left the tracks. The front two passenger cars and the locomotive stayed on the rails.

More importantly, as soon as preliminary investigations were finished those cars were simply detached from the wreckage behind… and drove away.

Just from his quick view of the aft part of the train, Ken could tell that this was a much more severe crash. The Hatfield line had been a commuter rail, only a relatively few cars. Not a freight train with eighty or more cargo cars to weigh it down.

But still… the last cars on the line seemed to have spun away and more or less disintegrated. Ten cars later they were at all angles across the ground, torn and mangled.

Ten cars later, closer to the tracks.

And where Ken sat? He couldn’t tell. Thought it possible that this car might still be on the rails.

He jumped to his feet.

The three engines sat only ten cars ahead. One of them hissed as though angry to have been sidelined in such an ignominious manner. Motionless, but with a pent-up power that was still awesome and a bit dangerous.

And the front locomotive looked like it sat square on the rails.

Ken looked at Aaron. The old cowboy nodded at him, and he could tell that both were thinking the same thing.

“Think it’ll still run?” asked Ken.

Aaron glanced behind them. The zombies were still moving slowly. But their broken bodies straightened a bit more every second. Their motions smoothed out as they drew into tight knots, seeming as always to draw strength and agility from the simple fact of their siblings’ propinquity.

The train wasn’t moving. The things would be on them that much faster.

“It better,” said Aaron.

Neither man looked at the other. There were no questions about loyalty or about what was to happen next.

They simply ran.

38

When he jumped over the first space between boxcars, Ken saw that this boxcar, too, had derailed. Not as radically as the rear cars, obviously, but when he jumped he could easily see how the two boxcars were well off the centerline of the tracks. His heart sank.

This far forward? What if the engines are off the tracks, too?

What if we’re on foot from here?

He landed on the roof of the next car and ran. Ran fast as he could, not just to outrun the swarming creatures that hunted them, but to outrun the bleak thoughts that threatened to overtake him.

He ran so fast he forgot to notice the difficulty of jumping from car to car, the fear of leaping from boxcar to flat. It might have been simply that the train was stopped, but Ken suspected that he would have run this nimbly if he had been racing over a hypersonic bullet train. He was too afraid of too many things to worry about the vague threat of lost footing.

Aaron was behind him now, and Ken didn’t think the cowboy was just letting him have the lead. Ken was in front because he had earned this position. He had somehow become different in the last few hours, the last few minutes.

He had to react. There was too much going on to let him sit still and come up with master plans. But his reactions could be careful, and calm, and cunning.

He dropped to a flatcar. Rolled. Came up in a full-tilt sprint.

Three more cars to back the engine.

He jumped up the back of the boxcar ahead of him. Clambered up as quickly as the zombies might have done.

Looked back.

The things were within thirty cars. A mass of arms and legs and open mouths waiting for flesh. The growl almost painfully loud now that the sounds of the train had been silenced. The things swarmed so close to one another that Ken couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. A leg might belong to this creature, or to thing beside it. An arm could be the possession of this man, or the woman tangled up in him as they crawled together over the remains of the train.

And, really, did it matter whose arms or legs they were? Weren’t they all, at some fundamental level, just a single creature that wanted only one thing: to destroy all humanity?

Ken ran again.

He launched himself over the divide between this boxcar and the penultimate one. Felt a hand on his shoulder. Aaron.

“They’re in there,” said the cowboy. Panting a bit. That made Ken glad for some reason. Nice to be reminded that the guy was at least somewhat human.

Aaron pointed down. The car at their feet.

Ken went totally still.

Waiting.

Only four people dead in that massive Hatfield crash.

But what if some of the dead here were his?

He listened. Not long – they didn’t have long – but he stood silent for an instant.

Long enough to hear….

Nothing.

No calls, no cries. No whimpers or screams.

The car below sounded empty.

Or lifeless.

39

Ken couldn’t do what he wanted to. Couldn’t just throw himself over the side of the boxcar; jump over and fling himself to the door and open it to see what had happened to his wife and children, not to mention Christopher and Buck. It wouldn’t be the same as hitting the bed of a flatcar: loose gravel, rock, and sand lay on either side of the train in a gentle slope that led to a sort of dry wash on either side of the tracks. Pitching himself over the side of the train would have been a sure way to break an ankle, a leg – a neck.

He cast about for a ladder, for a rail to grab.

Aaron was well ahead of him. The cowboy apparently heard the same lack of motion – lack of everything – that Ken did. A spasm of terror jammed its way into his expression, and Ken was glad to see it. He didn’t think the other man’s fear was anything strange, either. Despite his surprise attack and his talk of death, Ken was starting to feel more and more as if the other man still… what? Cared? Worried?

Ken didn’t know what the right word was. How could you define someone who talked casually about the murder of two children in one instance, then a few minutes later had the aspect of a man whose own kin were at risk?

Once again, Ken struggled to understand the rapid shifts in the world around him. Once again he failed. He would have to content himself with survival. Hopefully with protecting his own.

Perhaps, if he lived long enough, understanding would eventually come.

Regardless, Aaron didn’t suffer the constraints of gravity or physics that hampered lesser mortals. He ran to the right edge of the train, then jumped. In midair he spun around, catching a rail on the top of the car with his good hand. He disappeared from view, only his clenched knuckles visible. Then they opened and his grip released.

Ken ran to the side of the train in time to see Aaron land perfectly on a set of rungs beside a latch that obviously held shut the sliding door on the side of the boxcar.

Aaron flipped back the latch as Ken started to lower himself over the side. Much slower than the older man had done.

The door slid open as Ken’s feet cleared the top of the car, and he swung himself into the doorway. It was a smoothly coordinated pair of movements, and he suspected that an onlooker would have assumed he and Aaron had practiced this open-and-enter routine often. For what purpose, who could know.

Ken’s feet fell inward and down as he released his grip on the roof rail. He was calling out before he hit the wood flooring that lined the inside of the boxcar.

“Maggie! Girls!”

There was no answer.

But there was light enough to see the still forms that lay in a jumble all around the car.

40

Vomit rose in Ken’s throat.

The lumps that lay all around were not moving, not breathing.

There was no life in here. No life any of the five… six… eight….

He blinked.

Too many.

Only a second passed. Only a second for the fact that the things on the floor were not his family and friends to sink in.

He died a thousand times in that second.

But it was not his family.

Just moving blankets. Lumps of fabric that had once protected cargo and now twisted across the floor and looked like bound bodies in the half-light of his terror.

He turned on Aaron, who hung half-in and half-out of the boxcar.

“Where are they?” he demanded. The words came out as a snarl, a sound the equal in menace to the growl that now saturated the air around them.

Give up.

Give in.

The call should have been harder to resist. But Ken’s rage was damping it. He was terribly afraid, yes. But if he gave into his fear – not for himself, but for his wife and children and friends – then he would be paralyzed. So he let the fear shift to anger. Anger was a close cousin to fear, the reason so many fights began in fright, so many murders were subtle twists of terror.

Anger was terrible, yes. But, sometimes, useful.

“Where?” he screamed again.

Aaron actually shrank back a moment, drawing more fully out of the boxcar. “HellifIknow,” he finally said. It was all one word. Confusion and his own fear and the rush to move melding the syllables into a single mass as seamless as the horde that was moving toward them.

A constant vibration was writhing through the car. The things were close.

“Come on,” Ken said. He jumped out the side door, not pausing to see if Aaron followed or not. His feet hit the gravel beside the train and he did not slip in the loose dirt. He ran forward. Toward the engine.

The girls had to be there. Maggie had to be there. Christopher and Buck and even Sally. They all had to be there.

The alternative was unthinkable. Therefore it could not be true.

They have to be there.

41

He ran. Faster than he should have, faster than he could have. He had too many injuries, too many aches and pains. But the hum of bruises and the thrum of sprains and strains pushed into the background as his feet covered the terrain.

He looked down at the wheels of next car they passed. Still off the tracks. But close. So close.

The next car. The last car.

Still off the tracks.

He passed it.

Give up.

Give IN.

The growl rose and rose as the things came. Thousands of them swarming over the metal of the train, painting it black as night, black as despair, black as death.

And Ken still ignored it. Before he had found it nearly overwhelming. Now… he brushed it aside. Still a force.

But so was he.

He thought he heard Aaron’s steps stutter. Didn’t know if it was because the cowboy was dealing with the psychic attack as well, or because he had hit a loose patch of sand. Nor did Ken care. The other man wasn’t his family.

And his family was his only focus.

He passed the final boxcar.

Came upon another figure.

Ken stopped automatically, halting so fast that his feet dug furrows in the gravel that underlay the tracks. His mind flashed automatically to the conclusion that it was a zombie; that the things had made it in front of them.

Then he realized the thing was alone. Not running toward them, but struggling against something at the rear of the boxcar.

And it was huge. Six-foot-seven at least, a hulking mass of muscle clad in body armor with “Boise Police” stenciled across the back, a WWII-issue gas mask dangling from his neck. Perfect white teeth stood out in stark contrast against skin so dark it was nearly an absence of light.

Elijah, one of the people who had rescued Ken only to point a gun at his children and take them hostage, gritted his teeth. His voice, deep as summer thunder, boomed, “Don’t just stand there, dammit. Help me!”

42

Ken felt like his awareness had heightened. Like he could sense more than he should have been able to. Not just what was happening in front of him, but even what was out of sight.

The zombies were coming. Within perhaps twenty cars.

Aaron, rushing forward to help Elijah. But he had only raised his foot; hadn’t yet had time to put it down. He was moving so slowly. Did he always move that slowly? Or was Ken just… processing things this quickly?

Elijah was straining at a lever that extended under the coupling between the boxcar and the next part of the train. The last of the three engines. The lever was bent, torqued out of alignment.

Aaron’s foot still hadn’t come down.

Next to the train: sand, gravel, dirt. The same slope to a dry wash. Then a twenty-foot stretch of nothing before the sand became scrub, then another twenty or thirty feet before scrub became woods.

Ken had no idea where they were.

He could feel life in the woods. Or at least imagine he could. Small hearts beating in feathered breasts, furry creatures peering out from hidden blinds as curiosity and terror tore at them in turns.

Aaron’s foot finally came down.

Time snapped back to itself.

“What’s going on?” said the cowboy.

“Draw bar’s bent all to hell!” snapped Elijah.

Ken didn’t understand that, but apparently it meant something to Aaron. He joined Elijah at the bar and both of them pulled on the metal. Nothing happened.

Give up.

Give in.

The growl. Louder. Close enough that individual voices could now be heard: high-pitched, low, trembling, firm. A cacophony of violence, sweeping and inevitable.

Ken thought of the unofficial motto of the United States: E pluribus unum. Out of many one.

He doubted Congress had had a thundering mob of zombies in mind when they pasted the phrase all over the nation’s seals and coins.

“What are you waiting for?” shouted Elijah. He waved to Ken. “Get over here and help us!”

Ken didn’t move. “Where’s my family?”

The big man gaped. “Man, we don’t have time for this!”

“There’s always time for family, pal,” said Ken. Still not budging. “Don’t you ever watch Dr. Phil?” Elijah appeared to be flummoxed by this.

“Tell him!” hollered Aaron.

Elijah screamed, “They’re safe! They’re at the engines, they’re all safe, dammit. Now help!”

Ken stepped forward. Put a hand on the bar. Didn’t pull. Not yet. “If you’re lying to me… I’ll kill you, Elijah.”

It should have been ridiculous. The other man outweighed Ken by easily a hundred pounds – all of it muscle. He looked combat-ready, and was definitely armed.

But the big man stepped back. He nodded mutely, and his gaze dropped away from Ken’s.

Ken put his hand to the lever.

The three men lifted.

The growl was closer.

“Fifteen cars,” he murmured. He tried to convince himself it was a bad guess. That the things could be farther back than that.

He failed.

43

The lever moved an inch, accompanied by an angry screech, then seized up again. Elijah grunted, and Ken saw the veins and sinews come out of the man’s neck so far someone could have played them like harp strings.

Aaron puffed. The only sound he made, but Ken could feel the strain coming off him.

Ken dug deep. Pulled. He saw his family’s faces. Maggie. Lizzy. Hope.

Derek.

The lever popped up. It felt like all resistance had disappeared, like the thing had held itself against them until it completely failed.

Something jerked up below the coupling between the boxcar and the rear locomotive. The joint between the two popped open. Mostly.

“That gonna be enough?” said Aaron. “The Janney ain’t –“

“Gonna have to do!” shouted Elijah. He pointed, and Ken swung around but already knew what he was going to see.

They were here. The horde.

Ten cars away. Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

The lead creatures saw them. Some were whole, not even the bites that had Changed them apparent. Some were hideously torn and mutilated – almost foul in their destruction. A few of them had the scabrous growths on their faces that Ken had seen before: black encrustations that sprung out of the creatures’ cheeks, foreheads, chins.

Eyes.

One of them had a face entirely covered by the growth. There was only a small hole where the mouth should be. But it ran smoothly as the others, and faster than most. It chirped occasionally, a sound Ken thought must be some kind of echolocation. Though it could just as easily be the way the thing farted or some kind of zombie love poem.

“Can we get outta here fast enough?” said Aaron.

“Probably not,” said Elijah. But he began to run.

Aaron followed. Ken brought up the rear.

And the things kept coming.

They would never stop.

44

As with Aaron, a combination of panic and desperate hope drove Ken to higher levels of strength. He passed Aaron; had to concentrate on not passing Elijah. The only reason he didn’t was that the big man knew where Ken’s family was.

The three locomotives loomed to their left. The massive caboose-like engine farthest back. Two windows at the rear, two at the front. Next came the flat unit. Lower than the preceding engine, and the main part of it was also slightly narrower than the rest of the train to allow for the walkways on either side. The front unit – the one that most looked like what people thought of as the locomotive – was an iron monster with a room-sized area in back for the train’s crew.

The whole thing was painted a dull olive green with a few yellow and white markings on the side.

Ken also knew that there was a small door in the front of the cab that led to a basic toilet. That had surprised him for some reason, the first time he saw it on a trip to the Boise Depot on a date with Maggie and they had a freight locomotive on display. It was a cheap date for a couple who had no money and didn’t particularly need any to enjoy themselves. The background activity wasn’t the important thing, it was the company that mattered.

Why the toilet had seemed strange to him then, and why he suddenly remembered it now, were mysteries to him. The mind flits back and forth between memory and reality, between Then and Now, at its own whim. Sometimes this is blessing, sometimes curse. Sometimes simply strange.

In the next moment he didn’t wonder, he didn’t care. Because he saw something. A face. Not human, but nor was it alien to him. It was something familiar, and something that gave him hope.

The snow leopard was leaning out over the top of the center engine. Peering at him with a look that seemed almost human. Maybe Ken was anthropomorphizing – surely he was – but the animal seemed to be staring at him with a mix of irritation and contentment. As though to say, “It’s you. Finally.”

Ken breathed the snow leopard’s name. A name both ridiculous for its mistaken gender and wonderful for its source. “Sally,” he said.

The leopard chuffed.

And another voice answered. Quavering. “Ken?” said the voice. “Is that you?”

Maggie.

45

Aaron and Elijah ran on.

Ken did not.

He swerved sideways. Ran to the middle of the engine and leaped straight up. A jump that should have brought him crashing into the side of the train, but again his muscles were fueled by something more than himself, something outside of his pain.

Maggie.

The voice had come from above. From the top. Maybe from the other side.

He grabbed the walkway and clambered up the rail. His pulse beat in his ears, drowning out the shrieks and growls that were close, close, closer.

He didn’t have long.

“I’m coming, Maggie!”

Why isn’t she coming to me?

A moment later he had his answer.

“Kenny, what’s happening?”

The words came to him as he made it over the rail. Stood on the steel walkway behind it. He peered over the top of the low box that was the center of the car.

Maggie. Buck. Christopher.

The girls.

They were all there.

All of them were tied to various metal outcroppings. The three adults had blindfolds on, and Buck and Christopher were gagged. Maggie and the kids weren’t – apparently the kidnappers weren’t unchivalrous.

Ken’s blood pressure spiked. He heard thuds and knew it was Aaron and Elijah climbing into the front cab. Had to restrain himself from turning to run after them.

What would he do? Attack them? Die in a hopeless fight?

Then he noticed – really noticed – the girls. Hope and Lizzy. He had thought they were tied together, they lay so close. But then he saw that they were merely laying on top of one another.

Maggie was curled in a tight ball, her head down as though the seven-year-old was trying to burrow into the train’s hood.

Lizzy had her little head on her sister’s legs. Her tiny body splayed out beyond. Right hand tied to something below her body. Eyes wide open.

Staring at the sky.

Both utterly motionless.

He had seen this before. Every time the monsters came, every time the zombies closed, the girls changed. They – along with their mother and Buck - had been captured by the zombies. But they hadn’t been killed, hadn’t been bitten.

They had been taken. Dragged to the top of a building, swaddled in some kind of strange cocoon.

And what had happened there?

No one knew. None of them could remember.

The adults hadn’t shown any effects. But the girls kept shifting between what Ken thought of as normal and this strange “other” state. Sometimes they almost seemed to hope for the Change, to wish to be taken. Sometimes they even seemed to help the zombies.

And when Lizzy had spoken….

Ken shuddered. Thinking of her little voice, speaking not toddler words but saying clearly, “You are not family. You are renegades.”

Sally seemed to mitigate the effect. The snow leopard stood near them now, but even he couldn’t stop it from happening completely, it seemed.

Ken’s heart dropped out of him. Fell right to the center of the earth. His girls….

Maggie’s voice snapped him back to the world.

“Ken? You there? Ken, dammit.”

A measure of her fear that she had cursed.

He moved toward her. Grabbed her wrists. “I’m here,” he said.

Maggie sobbed. “Oh, thank you,” she said. “Thank you, God.”

Buck and Christopher writhed. Ken couldn’t be sure if they were congratulating him, cursing him for taking so long, or simply moving for movement’s sake. Regardless, both looked terrible. Buck’s hair and scalp hung to his skull in loose, oozing strips where zombies had tried to yank him and Hope bodily out of a bus window by his hair alone – only Buck’s incredible will to protect Ken’s daughter had saved them. Ken thought he still saw yellow bone peeking through in a few spare spots above the big man’s eyebrows. And Christopher looked little better, with a busted-up nose and a severe laceration on his cheek, arms raked from wrists to shoulders.

But all those were old wounds. Ken had already seen them. Now, bound to the top of the train, both looked even more battered and bruised: apparently they hadn’t come up here without some struggle.

The temperature of Ken’s blood rose a bit higher.

Back to his wife. She was tied with the same plastic cuffs that had bound him. And while he had managed to loose himself by pounding the things to pieces, he didn’t think he could pull the same trick without breaking her wrists as well.

He pulled off her blindfold. She blinked against the sudden flood of light.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

He kissed her. It was sweet. He hoped it wasn’t their last.

The train lurched under them.

“You better,” she said as they separated.

He looked up.

The train engines were growing louder.

But the zombies had almost reached the final locomotive engine.

Please, God, make them slow up. Somehow, slow them down.

He shifted his thoughts to the things themselves.

Give us a BREAK, dammit!

The train engines grew louder.

But it didn’t matter. They hadn’t moved fast enough to outpace the zombies before. And he knew they wouldn’t move fast enough to get away now.

46

Ken ran over the flat top of the engine toward the front of the train. Leaped over his daughters. Jumped to the ridge of metal that partially hid the front engine from view.

The rear of the lead engine had two doors leading into what he supposed was the cockpit – or driving area, or whatever they called it. He didn’t care. All that mattered was that the doors were open. One was on either side of the train, with a set of stairs leading downward so that the engineer and other crew could get into the cab.

Ken could see Elijah. The big man was seated at the right side of the small room, his hands resting on a pair of levers, moving every so often.

He also saw Theresa.

Like Elijah, Theresa had appeared – seemingly out of nowhere – to rescue Ken and his friends. Like Elijah, she had turned on them. Had turned on his children. Had, with Aaron’s help, taken them hostage for some still-unknown reason that might well involve his girls’ death.

She also was dressed in “Boise Police” body armor, a gas mask dangling from her neck. She had red hair and a few extra pounds that rounded out her body. She would have been plumply attractive were it not for the fact that she was a killer-in-waiting. That and, perhaps, the thick scar that curled its way around her neck and made her voice sound only a little less gruff than the growl that followed the survivors everywhere.

Theresa was on the left of the train. Standing with arms crossed. Gun clearly riding on her hip. Elijah also had a sidearm, though Ken couldn’t see his.

He also couldn’t see Aaron. He guessed the cowboy was in there, riding out of sight behind the bulkhead.

That would make what came next harder.

But Ken had no doubt he would do it. Everyone – all his friends, his family – depended on him. Doubt would only get them killed.

He jumped.

He landed with the solid thud he had come to expect in traveling across car after car. His feet hit the second-to-top tread on the stairs to the cab. His hands came down firmly on the safety rails on either side.

Elijah glanced back. His face tautened. “He’s here.”

Aaron slid into the doorway. “Ken, we don’t have time for this.”

“No, we don’t.” Ken jerked a chin behind him. “They’re going to get on the train. I need the others loose.”

Theresa stepped into the doorway behind Aaron. “Are you nuts? No way.”

Aaron looked at Ken. Impassive.

“Now, Aaron. Or we all die.”

Ken turned to Theresa and took a knife from her belt. It was six inches long. The edge glittered: a razor that sliced the light in the cab.

Ken tensed.

Aaron tossed the knife to him. Ken snatched it out of the air.

“What are you doing?” Theresa screamed.

Aaron reached behind the bulkhead and came back with a tool. A heavy wrench.

“Let’s go get ‘em,” he said to Ken.

47

When Aaron said that, Ken was reminded for a moment of Dorcas. The farm woman who had come along on an insane trip to save a bunch of strangers. Who had saved him time and again. And why? When asked, she merely said, “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

She had died for them. For all of them.

No. Not died. Worse. Changed. One of them now.

And now Aaron was helping again. Why?

Ken didn’t understand. Didn’t know what was happening – not only in the greater world outside the train, the world that had turned inside out and seemed hell-bent on imploding, but in the much smaller world of the people he knew and thought he knew. What was Aaron’s endgame? What were Elijah and Theresa trying to do?

No time to figure it out now.

Ken began to turn back to the cab doors.

“I can’t let you.” Theresa slid her gun from its holster. Aimed it at Ken.

“Theresa, dammit –“ Aaron began.

“We don’t know what’s happening, Aaron. We already decided that –“

“That’s right, we don’t know,” snapped Aaron. “And until we do, no one dies. No one.” He glared at her. Then turned away, dismissing both her and her weapon. “Go, Ken.”

Ken turned away as well. His back twitched. He felt like he had a bright red circle painted in the middle of it.

It was an easy jump to the engine’s walkway.

It was also easy to see the zombies loping along the side of the train.

A few had made it to the side of the last engine.

Ken ran back to the middle of the center engine. Jumped up again. Numb to everything but what he had to do.

He didn’t go to Maggie. Instead went to Buck. He sawed at the big man’s wrist cuffs. The second they came loose Buck tore his blindfold and gag loose. Some skin came off along with the blindfold, a few bits of gray hair. He didn’t scream, didn’t make a noise. Ken wondered if that was life now – pain such a part of things it wasn’t worth even noticing.

Like Maggie, Buck blinked in the sunlight, but said nothing. Just stared at Ken as he moved to his daughters. He snapped each of their bonds with one cut of the knife. Then looked back at Buck.

“Get them into the front,” he said.

Buck didn’t question. He just nodded. Then grabbed the girls. He tucked one under each arm. Ken had been injured, out of it for a few days. And during that time Buck had somehow come to view himself as a protector. A friend or favored uncle.

He would die for these girls.

He moved to the end of the engine’s flat top, then sat and swung his legs over and dropped down to the walkway as carefully as he could.

Ken had thought about sending Maggie, but he didn’t trust Theresa, and he figured Buck had a better chance against her. Not to mention Elijah. Buck was the only one of them nearly big enough to go mano a mano with someone that size.

Buck’s head swung back and forth as he oriented himself. He visibly started as he saw the zombies. Then turned and ran to the cab.

Sally, who had been resting near the girls, dropped down silently with Buck.

Ken moved to Maggie next. Loosed her. “Go with him,” he said.

She shook her head. Staring behind her. Knowing what was coming. “We have to stop them.”

“I know,” he said. “But you have nothing to do that with.”

“Ken –“

“Go!”

He shoved her. Then practically shoved her off the top of the engine. Down to the walkway.

She glanced up at him.

He nodded at her.

She touched his foot – the only part of him she could reach. Then ran.

Ken ran back to Christopher. Aaron was already there. Christopher’s wrists were lashed to a handle that jutted out of the metal of the engine. Aaron put a jaw of the wrench between Christopher’s bonds and the metal. Levered up. The plastic popped. Christopher yelled through his gag. He ripped it off.

“Ow, that hurt!” he hollered. Then he tore off his blindfold. “Don’t you….” His voice died as he saw what was coming.

As the first zombie put its hand onto the top of the engine.

At the same time, a shadow drew across the sun. The dark clouds that had been hanging overhead since Ken made his escape from the boxcar finally shuddered and opened up.

Rain began to fall.

48

Aaron dove down to one side of the engine.

Ken thought the cowboy was abandoning them. But there was a sharp clang and the sound of a metal door opening. Sounded like Aaron popped a lock of something with his wrench. Then he tossed something at Christopher. A crowbar.

“You take the other side!” Aaron shouted at Christopher. He switched his gaze to Ken. “You’re top.”

Ken and Christopher moved immediately. The last time Ken had seen the younger man, he had been nearly crippled by despair. He had seen his baby, a baby he thought dead in a hospital collapse, changed not only to a zombie but to one of the ones that was metamorphosing into something hideous and even more alien than the others. Worse, he had attacked it with an axe before realizing who it was. Ken had worried Christopher was broken, mind and soul.

But he moved now, without hesitation or apparent fear. The only difference this Christopher and the old one was that the young man’s grin – always present before – was gone. A twice-broken nose (courtesy of Ken) and a sliced cheek and arms (courtesy of zombies) had failed to strip him of that smile. But now his smile and his humor had fled. Now he looked serious, almost expressionless.

Perhaps not broken, but something had changed in him. Something had died.

Ken only hoped they wouldn’t all die in a more physical manner.

Christopher dropped over the side. On Ken’s left. Aaron on his right. Both men moved forward, ready to hold off the zombies that loped toward them on the sides of the train.

Ken faced the one that had made it to the top.

Raindrops plunked down on the top of the engine. The water darkened the metal in near-perfect circles the size of quarters. Then the water-darkened circles joined as the top of the engine drenched.

The zombie growled at Ken.

Ken screamed. Ran across dark water toward the hunter.

49

It happened faster than Ken could have expected. The storm brought no lightning, but the next moment seemed to happen in a series of flashes, as though cracks of brightness illuminated only every other instant in the next explosion of activity.

The zombie, jumping at him…

… Ken, juking…

… the train, jerking as it prepared to move…

… the thing sliding a bit, losing purchase on the slippery metal for a critical second…

… Ken’s foot kicking out…

… the thing’s snarl…

(GIVE UP! GIVE IN!)

… his foot connecting…

… the thing’s knee bending sideways…

… it fell…

… crackles as its knee righted itself, impossibly straightened…

… the thing back on its feet…

… and Ken screamed and buried the knife in its throat.

The zombie didn’t seem to mind the knife. It grabbed Ken’s shoulders with piston-fingers. His shoulders groaned. The thing pulled toward him. Its teeth clicked.

Ken resisted. His hands still on the knife that was buried in the thing’s neck. He pushed away as hard as he could. Blood washed over his hands. Warm. Dark bits like it had started to clot in the thing’s veins. The rain carried some of the gore away, but not all of it, and not fast enough. Ken shivered in spite of himself.

The zombie’s teeth were a foot away. It could pull harder than Ken could push.

Ken kept pushing, but now he shifted part of his force to a sideways motion. Grinding the knife to the left. Digging. The knife was buried to the hilt in the thing’s neck. Which meant it had to be sticking out the back.

He twisted. Twisted.

The thing was inches away. He could smell its breath.

Twist.

The thing dropped.

Ken wasn’t fooled. He had managed to sever the spine, but he had seen this before. It wasn’t dead. In a moment the spine would heal, the thing would start twitching, then muscle control would return and it would be as deadly as ever.

He hoisted it to a shoulder.

It was already shuddering. Like it was willing itself to motion. Its head – above the level of the cut – still had a modicum of control. Its teeth still clicked together, and Ken was careful to avoid them as he carried it to the side of the engine.

Rain fell harder. Water bounced off the train, like even the elements had joined the enemy and were trying to wash the last vestiges of humanity away.

Below him, Christopher was swinging away with the crowbar, barely managing to keep one of the things at bay. He connected, shattering the thing’s jaw. The lower half of the zombie’s face shifted to the side. The sight gladdened Ken, since he figured a zombie with a jaw a good ten inches out of alignment would have serious trouble biting.

The jaw slid back into place.

The thing jumped at Christopher. And Christopher hadn’t recovered from his swing yet.

50

Ken tossed the twitching thing off his shoulder. He felt it scrape him on the way down. Prayed it wasn’t a bite.

Apparently not. No blood burst from his pores, no need to scream and devolve to pure predation. He felt a sudden jolt of pain through his torso, but that was all.

The zombie – spasming, almost epileptic – fell. It hit the one that was racing toward Christopher, and both tumbled to the walkway.

Ken had only bought Christopher a second or two, but Christopher used his time perfectly. He swung the crowbar down as hard as he could. Again. Two heads burst open. Pink sludge exploded outward. The zombie on the bottom – the one that had been attacking Christopher – now turned its attention to the thing on top of it. That zombie shuddered as control finally returned to its body and it began batting at its once-fellow.

Both had gone mad. Had lost that will that bound them in a common purpose. They no longer hated all humanity. Now they simply hated.

The two rolled off the side of the train. Spun down the gully in a flurry of teeth and arms and legs. Hands and feet kicking and tearing, blood flowing and bone breaking.

Two more zombies took their places at the rear of the engine. Christopher dropped to a crouch.

His grin was back. Not the same ain’t-life-a-kick grin he had worn before, though. This was an angry smile, the kind of expression Ken suspected a soldier with nothing to lose might wear.

He heard something on the other side. A shriek of pain. Aaron.

Ken ran back across the top of the engine. He slid the last feet, knowing instinctively that he had to come down to the walkway, and come down hard.

The water sprayed under him. Separated in twin curtains of white, like he was an angel of God paving the way for Moses and his people to cross over to safety.

But there was no safety on the other side of the hood. His feet crashed down on top of the zombie that had trapped Aaron against the side rail. Aaron’s wrench was in the thing’s mouth, but he was far from safe. Black acid was dripping around its mouth. Melting the wrench. Melting the thing’s own face. But a few drops had also landed on Aaron’s legs. And Ken had seen before how much even a drop of the concentrated solvent hurt on human skin.

The wrench was bending, about to break, when Ken came down on the thing’s back. His left hand went around the thing’s forehead, yanking it back, and his right jabbed the knife sideways through its neck. He levered it toward him and the knife slammed through flesh and blood, exploding out the back of the thing’s neck.

The knife blade broke, the metal embedded in the thing’s neck. Ken was left with nothing but the hilt. Useless.

The thing kept biting. Vomiting acid. Perhaps dying, but also seconds from killing Aaron.

Ken pulled at it. No use. The thing was too strong.

He looked around for something to use. Anything to serve as a weapon. Saw an open door leading to a small compartment: the area Aaron must have pulled the crowbar from. Inside hung several small tools and a few large pieces of metal.

Ken grabbed one of the metal pieces. About fifteen inches long, a jaw-like structure at one end. He realized it was a replacement coupler, a knuckle that could be used in case one of the ones between the cars broke in transit.

It looked like it weighed a ton. But to Ken’s adrenalized muscles it felt light as a feather.

He spun back to Aaron. Swung it as hard as he could. It hit the zombie in the back of the neck.

The thing’s head exploded. The force of the hit probably severed its spine as well, probably would have dropped it if the impact hadn’t simultaneously driven it right over the side.

“You okay?” he said to Aaron.

Aaron nodded, panting. Rain rolled in rills down his creased face, pearled in his beard. He looked at Ken strangely.

“What?” said Ken.

But there was no time to answer that. More of the things were coming.

51

The rain was falling sideways.

Sideways, and more of the things were coming.

The drops falling harder, bigger, faster.

Sideways, and now there were five on the end of the gangplank, clambering over each other in their effort to get to Ken and Aaron. Probably that many on Christopher’s side.

Sideways rain.

Five zombies. That was all. But it was enough. Enough to kill them. To Change them and then run to the locomotive and take the rest of the survivors; the rest of the people the Ken loved.

Sideways rain.

Ken realized that no more of the monsters were climbing aboard the train.

And the rain wasn’t flying sideways. The train had started moving. Was just going fast enough that they were racing into the drops. And in so doing it had also outpaced the rest of the zombies.

“Back up!” he screamed. Then, louder, “Chris, move back!”

“No argument here!” screamed the young man.

Ken turned and pushed Aaron. The cowboy stumbled back, looking confused. Ken didn’t give him a chance to argue, though. “Move!” he screamed.

The things that had made it aboard the train growled. The sound of feet slapping on wet metal.

“Jump!” shouted Ken when Aaron reached the end of the walkway that spanned the length of the second locomotive. He put a hand on the cowboy’s back and propelled him across the gap between this car and the first locomotive.

Aaron leaped, as much out of forced propulsion as by choice.

Ken looked over and saw another form flying through the air. Christopher.

Both men landed on the back of the lead engine, on the steps leading to the twin doors that allowed entry to the engine’s crew cab. Ken saw Buck standing in there, still holding Hope and Liz. Sally stood at his feet, the cat’s hair standing on end and its one remaining ear pricked forward, its teeth bared.

Ken leaped.

He didn’t make it to the steps.

Instead, he slammed to the coupler between the first and second locomotives. He heard a voice as he landed. His.

“Please, please, please.”

He hadn’t realized he was saying anything, but wasn’t surprised. He had known there was no way to hold what little remained of the train. They didn’t have enough weapons, didn’t have enough manpower.

All they could do was get rid of the back two locomotives.

He thought the front engine was an independent locomotive. Could keep going without any help from the back two. He was sure he remembered that from that long-ago date to the train station.

Pretty sure.

He landed on the short span of metal between the first two engines, looked to the side. Panicked because he didn’t spot what he was looking for, then realized it was there, just painted. The same piece of metal that he and Aaron had helped Elijah use to separate the other cars from the engine – what the huge man had called a draw bar. It was here, but it had neon orange markings that had thrown Ken for a second.

He reached down, his left hand gripping the metal of the locomotive, right hand reaching for that bar below.

He heard a growl.

Looked behind.

Three of the things. One on the walkways to either side of the hood unit behind him. One looking down from above. Rain pounded down their faces, giving their already-wrathful features an added air of unreality. They seemed like things that had clawed their ways up from the depths of some dark, cold place to find this moment.

The one above Ken was one of the ones that had no eyes. Only scaly growths where eyes once had been, where eyes – in a right world – still would be.

It chirped. The sound high and piercing, almost a whistle. Then its head oriented downward. Not looking at Ken – no eyes to look with – but certainly knowing he was there. The thing snarled.

52

The rain was still falling. Dripping off Ken’s face, arms, back. His hand, reaching for that bar.

He kept reaching as the thing jumped. As it flew toward him. Like he was on an inalterable autopilot, some setting he couldn’t control. And of course that was fairly true: if he could loose the train, get his family away… well, then it didn’t matter if he died or not. If they lived, that was enough.

The thing fell toward him. Like it knew Ken was all that would separate the rest of them from their prey.

The rain fell.

Thunder finally came.

A colossal crash roared out above Ken, the sound so loud that it nearly deafened him. So loud it did what the sight of the monster flying at him had not: it stopped him, just for a moment, from reaching for the bar that would cut the cab unit away from the two trailing engines.

It was loud enough, somehow, that it shifted the flight of the zombie.

The thing slammed backward, rocketing not into Ken but instead colliding with the forward bulkhead of the middle locomotive behind him. It slid down the metal, twitching, and disappeared under the wheels.

It all happened so fast that Ken almost didn’t see the cratered mass of black and pink that the thing’s head had become.

Two more claps of thunder exploded nearby. Ken looked up. Saw two more of the zombies dancing back. Pushed back.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it!” screamed a voice from somewhere unseen in the cab. A voice that was grating, harsh. Spoken through a throat badly-cut and just  as badly-sewn in a mockery of medical care. Theresa.

Another explosion. Not thunder. Theresa was shooting. Buying him time.

Ken reached the bar. He prayed it wasn’t bent or mangled the way the one farther back had been. There was no way he had the leverage to pry something like that from this angle.

He grasped the bar.

Pulled.

Nothing happened.

He pulled again.

The bar refused to move.

More of the zombies appeared. Crawling up the sides of the middle engine to look at him. He only had a second. And doubted that Theresa could continue blasting them like skeets out of the air.

53

What’s going on?

What am I doing wrong?

Ken looked down. His gaze focused instantly on a pair of lines snaking below the knuckle he stood on. Maybe that was it. Maybe.

He was still holding the replacement coupler. He swung it now. Hit each of the hoses. Both separated, one just falling apart and the other seeming to burst with an explosion of air.

He grabbed the draw bar again. Still nothing. It wouldn’t pull.

Sudden murmuring. Then Aaron screamed, “You can’t separate it without slack! Brace! And get ready to pull!”

Ken’s mind processed the instructions and figured out what was going to happen only a nanosecond before it occurred. He dropped the knuckle that was still in his hand and managed to grab a nearby grill and say a quick prayer that it would hold him.

Then there was a shriek as brakes, both air brakes and mechanical pads, engaged.

He slammed forward against the bulkhead of the engine. Saw two bodies fly forward and down and disappear under the wheels of the train in a spray of red and black. Two zombies gone.

An instant later the back engines slammed forward, pounding him the opposite direction as they rammed the front locomotive. He nearly lost his grip, and his body screamed at him to hug the train.

Ken ignored the impulse. Forced himself to lean out.

He assumed that there were normally controls to insure that all the cars of the train braked at the same time.

He assumed that someone – Elijah – had overridden them to cause precisely this effect.

He assumed that the back engines had been meant to collide with the front one.

Because the knuckles under his feet shifted.

There was slack. For just an instant perhaps.

He grabbed the draw bar again. Braced on the half of the connecter closest to the front engine. Pulled up.

Something shifted under Ken’s feet.

More explosions above. Too many to be from one gun. Elijah must be shooting as well. The guns that had pointed at Ken’s children now covering the family’s escape.

The knuckle under his feet split in two.

The front locomotive pulled away from the two engines behind it.

The growls continued. But they quickly grew fainter. Drowned by the sound of gunfire, then the sound of the engine. Then the rain alone was enough to silence them.

And then the rain was all there was.

Ken shimmied to the right until he could put a hand on the guard rail beside the short row of steps that led up to the cab door on that side. He got himself centered on the steps, taking his time. It would be only too perfect to survive everything that had just happened, only to slip on a wet tread and fall off the train.

Once he was sure of his footing, he walked up.

Only a step, though. That was all he went.

Theresa was waiting in the doorway. Her gun smoking, the rain puffing into steam where it touched the hot barrel.

The bore looked enormous. Big enough to fall into. And he could see all of it, pointed as it was directly between his eyes.

Beyond Theresa, he could make out Elijah. The big man had one hand on the train controls. But he was swiveled in his seat, pointing his gun as well. Ken couldn’t see what he was aiming at, but he suspected it was his family.

“Now,” said Theresa, “we’re going to figure a few things out.”

54

“Theresa, now’s not the time,” said Aaron. He was still perched outside the cab, on the other stairs directly across from Ken.

“Now’s the perfect time.”

“We don’t –“

Theresa looked like she was going to cut Aaron off, but Ken beat her to the punch. “No, Aaron.” He stared evenly at Theresa. “Explain things to me, Theresa. Explain why you would go to the trouble of saving us, only to kill us. Why you would drive right into danger for us, then tie us up.” He paused. Then added, brutally, “Why your brother thought it was worth dying for us, if you were just going to kill us.”

Theresa’s face drained of blood, and for a moment Ken worried he might have gone too far. Her gun stayed on him, and whether he saw her knuckle whiten against the trigger or whether it was just a trick of the light, he couldn’t say.

She stood like that, motionless, a statue of grief just out of the reach of the rain that stitched silver threads through the rapidly-graying day. Then she moved, almost jerking to action. Her gun stayed on Ken, but she reached behind her and pulled something from the back of her belt.

Ken had seen it before. It was a box that she had had with her when she first appeared, blasting onto the scene in a school bus like the weirdest avenging angel who ever existed. She had been holding it when Derek –

(No. Don’t think of him that way. Derek’s dead, it was just something that looked like him. Not your boy. Just a thing.)

– appeared. When he screamed. And when he screamed, so did the box, emitting a high electronic peal.

“What is that?” said Ken.

“This?” she smiled. And gave the only answer Ken couldn’t have foreseen; the only answer that made no sense whatsoever.

“I’m not really sure.”

55

The rain saturated Ken’s hair. It coursed over his forehead and into his eyes. But he blinked not because of that, but because he couldn’t really understand what Theresa had just said.

“You don’t… you don’t know?” He blinked again, like if he blinked enough he would magically open his eyes one of these times and the world he had known – the world that actually made sense – would magically reappear. “Then what’s the point of –“

Theresa flicked a button on the side of the box. The same grinding, electronic scream he had heard before came again. Quieter – much quieter – but it was there. It created a grating and somehow eerie background to the words Theresa spoke. A reminder that even now, even “safe” for the moment, they couldn’t escape the strangeness that had enveloped the world.

“Me and my brother made it through the first few days. Met up with Elijah. Just us, hunkered down and trying to ride out what was happening.” She shuddered, memories skipping wraithlike across her features. “Then we met a guy. Said he was from the government. Some special forces guy who’d been sent from an army base.” She shook the box in her hand. “He had this. Said all this,” and she nodded, taking in the world, everything around them, “had happened so fast it had to be the result of some kind of broadcast. A signal.”

Ken nodded. This was what Aaron had already told him. And it made sense. But still….

“So what? Why lock me up? Why come after me and my kids?”

Theresa was still holding the box. Her eyes flicked to Aaron. He nodded.

She moved. The gun still pointed at Ken, but the box shifted toward the inside of the cab. There was a small cry – a voice that Ken recognized as Maggie’s.

He barely heard it.

What he heard was the squeal of the box as it increased. The volume rising as it moved toward his family.

Toward the girls.

He shook his head, not liking the implications of what had just happened. Not liking the conclusions his own mind jumped to.

Theresa turned back toward him. “The soldier – Captain Martin, he said his name was – died before he could say much. But he was looking for the broadcast source. He had this thing on him.” She shrugged again. “Two plus two is four.” She swiveled so the box was aimed back into the cab.

The shriek of the box couldn’t drown out the cry of fear that rose up in Ken’s heart.

56

“We weren’t there for you,” said Elijah softly. Even from the cab the big man’s deep voice carried clearly. “We were just following the sounds of the box. Trying to find the source – what we figured was the source. Trying to put things to rights. Or maybe just get humanity’s feet back under it again.” He shook his head. But like Theresa, his motions did not cause his aim to waver. “Just buy our side a little bit of time.” He grinned, a lopsided smile that spoke of dashed hope and life lost more eloquently than a long soliloquy could have done. “Just doin’ our best. But along the way we saw you needed help and went in to help you. Then we realized that your daughters were making the box sing loud and clear.”

“They’re good people, Ken,” said Aaron. The cowboy spoke loud enough for his voice to carry over the thrum of the train’s engine, the clack of the wheels on the tracks. But it still sounded soft, caring. Like he was breaking bad news to a friend.

“Good people?” Ken said. “Good people who were going to… what? Kill my kids?”

Aaron looked down. Not like he was ashamed, but like he was trying to figure out the best way to say what had to be said. “Yeah. Good people. Like you and Maggie and Christopher and Buck are good people. Like Dorcas. Like your boy. Good people, because they’re all willing to do what’s right.”

“Right isn’t killing –“

“It is if the people you kill are the people who are killing everyone else.” Aaron looked up now, his eyes clear and piercing. “Ken, you willing to keep your family at the expense of the entire world?”

“You don’t even know for sure the girls have anything to do with this!” Ken said. Desperation crept into his voice, cracking the edges of the words, raising them too high.

Aaron’s eyes hardened a bit. “They’re in it,” he said. “They haven’t been acting right. Not from the moment we found them. And you want further proof,” he added, and jerked his chin toward the cab. Ken saw Sally there, looking down at them with curious eyes. “How many kids you know got their own personal leopard following them around?”

Ken shook his head. Shook it and shook it like he thought he could dislodge what was happening, like it might all be a bad dream and if he just twisted his body hard enough he would wake up and find all had come back to normal. The family safe, Derek alive.

Especially that.

(Daddy, where are you?)

He almost jerked in place as the voice came into his head. The sound of his firstborn, faint but clear in his mind. He had thought he’d heard it before, when Derek – the thing that Derek had become – had been chasing them. But now there was nothing like that going on. Now he was alone in the rain.

Ken wondered if he was truly going mad. A body bent and broken beyond anything God could have intended, a mind pushed to the edge by loss and desperation.

(Daddy?)

Ken kept shaking his head. Not only to shed the strands of the nightmare that clung to him, but now also to shake loose the sound of a dead son in his mind.

“Ken?” Aaron sounded like he was choking back tears. “We don’t want to do this. None of us do. That’s why I went back to talk to you in the first place.”

“Then why’d you attack me, Aaron?” Ken nearly shouted the words. Bitterness replaced desperation; anger a welcome replacement to fear. “Why’d you tie up my friends and family?”

“Because we didn’t know.” Elijah. “Because we needed to figure out what to do, but the stakes are too damn high to take a chance on you running.”

“I wanted to see if you had any other ideas, Ken,” said Aaron. “Any other way of getting back at these things.” Ken looked at the cowboy. He was sincere. “I don’t want to be killing anyone, Ken. Never liked that, no matter what job I was doing. And I like your family. A lot.”

But….

Ken heard the unspoken word. But….

But I’ll do what has to be done.

But I’ll make myself do the unthinkable.

But I’ll kill your children if it’s the only way to save the world.

And Ken, in that moment, could think of no way to save his family, and no way to convince Aaron – or himself – of the wrongness of that.

57

Someone sobbed.

At first Ken thought it had to be Maggie. His wife, terrified for their children, for what was going to happen, or perhaps for the possibility – if not the actuality – of what Aaron and Theresa were saying.

But it was Elijah.

The big man had tears coursing down his cheeks. He was looking to the side, into the cab. “Don’t you see?” he said. “Don’t you understand?” He wiped his eyes. His gun didn’t move. “We’re all dying. This thing, it’s some kind of attack, some kind of invasion. And we might be able to stop it.”

His gun lowered. Not all the way. Just enough to point at something close to the floor. Something small.

“No!” Ken heard himself scream in tandem with his wife. Buck, too. And Christopher took a step up before stopping as Theresa swung her gun toward him.

“You’re a good momma,” said Elijah. “I know that.” Sobs wracked his huge body. “My momma was a good lady, too. She died when my neighbors pulled her to pieces. Didn’t deserve it.”

“And you think my girls deserve this?” screamed Maggie.

“None of us do,” said Theresa. Ken couldn’t be sure if she was speaking to Maggie, to him, or to herself. “That’s the point. Don’t you see that’s the point?” She looked like she was on the verge of tears as well. That scared him most of all: they really were good people. Not sadists or opportunists. Not people who wanted to take advantage of the end of the world to play out some power fantasy that bathed them in the blood of children.

They honestly believed this could save what was left of humanity.

The box was still whining that grating whine. Grit in his synapses, impeding his thoughts. Confusing him.

“My brother died,” said Theresa. “We’ve all lost people. None of us got to choose who or when.” Her gaze hardened. Focused fully on Ken. “And you don’t, either.”

His heart sank as he heard the implication in her words.

58

Ken leaped forward. No thought, no planning. Just motion. The primal thing that screamed to protect his offspring, that demanded that his line continue.

Something boomed. A second clap of thunder.

Then he was somehow past Christopher. Pushing under Theresa’s gun. It went off –

(Again? Was she the one who fired, or was it Elijah? Are the girls already dead?)

– and the sounds of the squawking box, the engine, everything all disappeared in a loud ringing that created a halo of sound around his world. He screamed in pain, but didn’t hear that, either. Just the single sustained tone.

No time to care. Theresa was covered in body armor. Body shots would be minimally helpful.

He did something he normally wouldn’t have considered. Something ruthless.

Something awful.

And he did it without hesitation. His family was at risk.

One hand swept her gun up as it fired.

The other hooked out. A hand turned into a claw. Yanked at her throat.

He felt the thick threads that bound the gash in her neck tear. Theresa gagged. Blood gushed. Warm on his skin, red on his hands.

He knew he could kill her. Could rip away in one smooth motion and she would be dead and he could take the gun and that would be that.

“It’s the right thing to do.”

Dorcas’s words – some of the first she had said to him – came back.

He stopped short of killing Theresa. Let her fall to the floor of the cab, grabbing he throat. She might still bleed to death, but he wasn’t going to pull her apart right there. He’d give her a chance.

That was more than she’d been prepared to give his girls.

Past her. Into the cab. He snatched Theresa’s gun from the floor where she’d dropped it. Hoped the safety wasn’t on. Hoped it was loaded. Hoped he could shoot it accurately.

Too many things to hope.

Two massive forms struggled beside the train’s controls. Buck had leaped on Elijah. Elijah was below Buck, driven back by the other man’s mass, by his frantic attack.

But Buck wasn’t a fighter. Not a trained one, anyway. Elijah sent a pair of punches into Buck’s kidneys, and the older man staggered back, gagging in pain.

Elijah pointed his gun.

Ken pointed his. The huge black man hadn’t noticed him. He could save them all.

A weight slammed into him from behind.

“Sorry, bud,” Aaron whispered.

59

Aaron drove Ken forward, and at the same time the cowboy’s hand slammed over his shoulder, driving into a nerve on his right bicep that half-deadened Ken’s arm. His gun drooped. He couldn’t help Buck that way.

If Buck was shot, Elijah and Aaron would take Ken out.

If Ken was gone, the girls would follow.

Ken twisted, but he couldn’t gain traction. Stumbling…. Not able to do anything, but he saw Maggie huddled over two still forms. Protecting her girls. She would die like that.

Another form jumped forward. Shoved itself between Ken and the control board as he plunged forward in a half-fall.

Christopher.

The young man didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a bright red lever and yanked it.

The train screamed as the brakes engaged.

The entire train seemed to dip, and what had nearly been a fall converted to headlong flight as Ken lost his footing. Something cracked in front of him.

Maggie screamed. Sally roared, a sound that managed to sound supremely strange to Ken even as he continued flying forward.

He hit Buck, Aaron still on his back. Both of them pounding into Elijah.

Something else hit them. Probably Theresa.

The train kept shrieking. It tilted.

Ken turned with it. Rotating his body. He felt Aaron fly off his back and shoulders, heard the meaty thud of metal on flesh. The cowboy grunted, then made no sound.

The train continued pitching to one side. Ken wondered if Christopher would accomplish what the zombies failed to do and would actually derail the locomotive.

The train shuddered to a stop.

Ken was on the floor. He picked himself up. Looked around. Aaron was up on the control panel, plastered against the side window of the train. Eyes closed, blood streaming down the side of his head.

Christopher was standing beside Ken. Apparently even though he’d lost his carefree attitude, the young man still had the reflexes and balance of a cat. He helped Ken to his feet.

Buck was groaning his way to his feet as well. So was Elijah. The older man made it up first, and kicked Elijah in the thigh. Elijah went to his knees.

Buck’s next move was a knee to the bigger man’s head. Elijah refused to go down.

The next kick closed Elijah’s eyes. He slumped.

Ken looked for his family.

They were on the other side of the cab. They had slid to the front like everyone else, Sally beside them, Maggie still hunched over the children. Her eyes were open, clear. Staring at him.

She smiled. A sickly smile, one that tried to be encouraging but only succeeded in conveying a sense that she could use a break.

Buck felt around the floor and then the control panel. “I can’t find the gun,” he muttered.

Elijah groaned.

Aaron’s eyes flickered.

Ken rushed to his wife. Helped her up, then looked at the others.

“Time to get off,” he said.

60

Ken felt a bit like he was drunk as he ran down the steps at the back of the locomotive. The world was tilted to one side, and his feet kept sliding out from under him.

No one else seemed to be having that problem. Maybe that was just a misperception. Maybe not. Perhaps he was the only one who had been hit this hard by recent events.

Well, they’ve all just been lounging around, tied to the top of a train, after all. Can’t expect them to be tired.

He almost laughed. The only things that kept the laughter back were the realization that it wasn’t at all funny… and his suspicion that if he started, stopping would be impossible.

He shook his head to clear the fog that seemed to have taken up a semi-permanent residence there, then turned to help Maggie down. She had Liz strapped to her chest again, once more dangling from the slightly-too-small carrier that had made the trip with them through the apocalyptic nightmare.

We get through this, Baby Bjorn is getting a serious five-star Amazon review.

The stairs were slick, and Ken worried that Maggie would slip. The rain had turned from huge but scattered splatters into a near torrent. The drops fell fast and thick around them, each visible as a fat bead that attacked the air on its way down.

Ken was already soaked. By the way Maggie joined him on the sand and dirt below the tracks – sand and dirt that were already beginning to sludge as they shifted to mud – so was she.

Behind her, Buck was holding Hope, half over his shoulder, half against his chest. She could have been a sleeping child, cradled against her favorite relative as he carried her to bed. But her arms were not over his shoulders, not around his neck. They hung loose at her sides. Buck joined Ken and Maggie. Looked around with the air of a bodyguard, or a man transporting the last of his most treasured personal items.

Ken didn’t even think about trying to carry take Hope from the big man. For one, he wasn’t sure he should be carrying anyone right now. For another, Ken suspected Buck was about as likely to turn her over as he was to offer one of his testicles to Aaron.

Sally, as always, wended her way between the two people holding the girls. Staying as close to them as possible. Licking at the girls’ feet every so often. She seemed relaxed, which Ken took for a good sign. The zombies activated – or at least exacerbated – her protective instincts, so if she was this relaxed, they had a moment.

We just have to worry about the monsters who are people.

Ken wondered why the leopard hadn’t protected them in the last minutes; why she hadn’t moved to save the girls. The predator had destroyed anything that threatened them to this point. Why not on the train?

Because he doesn’t attack humans.

The moment his subconscious pushed the thought to the surface it was flatly obvious. Sally had only attacked the zombies. Ferociously, murderously. But nothing against unChanged.

Christopher brought up the rear. He glanced once more into the cab before descending the steps to join the others. “He’s waking up. Fast.”

Ken didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. There were two very dangerous people in there. And one who was beyond deadly.

He looked around. The train, he saw, had indeed derailed. It stood at a slight angle to the tracks, useless. Which meant that not only would Aaron, Elijah and – if she could – Theresa be likely to come after them, that likelihood would increase due to the fact that there was nowhere else to go.

The gullies on either side of the train had flattened out. There was hardly any dip now, just an easy slope that dropped perhaps a foot or so. About twenty feet away to one side was thickly forested area. To the other lay fields and farmland, green and lush. Hardly anywhere to hide unless they managed to reach some wooded hills that looked like they were at least a few miles away.

The logical choice – the sensible choice – would be to take to the forest. That would allow them cover, give them a chance to lose themselves before Aaron and the others could hunt them down.

But the forest… that was where the zombies had come from. What if there were more?

Ken looked back. The others were staring at him. Waiting for his directions. That had made him uncomfortable before. It didn’t anymore. Something had changed in him. Maybe when he made that jump from the boxcar, maybe before.

He nodded toward the fields.

“Come on.”

61

The first obstacle came quickly.

Irrigation canals ran throughout this part of Idaho. They ranged in size, from a few inches across and a few inches deep, to yards wide and yards deep.

Before they hit the first field, Ken and the others reached one of the ubiquitous features. Water coursed through it, a steady stream that had been hidden from their view by the tall grasses that sprouted from its banks like a green curtain. The water flowed flat and fast. A bad sign. A bit of white, even some ripples, would have meant it was shallow. This nearly featureless surface meant the rains had swollen the water volume to capacity.

It was likely at least six feet deep. Maybe more.

And they couldn’t afford to just drop down and experiment to see how far it went. Couldn’t risk one of them getting swept away. Drowning. As a teacher, Ken had had the dangers of the canals drilled into him. Idaho had one of the highest rates of child drownings in the nation due to these irrigation features. Two hundred thousand gallons of water a minute could sweep by when at capacity. Even more when rain poured extra water into the ditches.

A few ring-necked ducks and a single trumpeter swan, oblivious of humanity’s end, swam across the water. They dipped heads and fed. Continued on without care for the group at the edge of their domain.

“Anyone see a gate or something else we can get across?” said Buck.

Everyone looked back and forth.

“Hard to tell,” said Christopher. His voice was still grim. Ken already missed the brightness the younger man had brought. He hoped the happy version of Christopher wasn’t gone, just buried beneath a momentary shock, a present grief.

Ken looked at the water. He turned left.

“You see something, Ken?” said Maggie. She hurried after him.

He shook his head. But within a hundred feet they found a control gate, buried below the surface of the rushing water. Perhaps only three inches under the stream, clear liquid flowing over it in strangely hypnotic ripples that formed, broke, formed again.

“Good eye,” said Buck. He looked at Maggie. “Can you get across without slipping?”

“I’ll have to.”

“I’ll go first,” said Christopher.

Ken nodded. “You stand on the other edge, I’ll be here. We’ll feed the others across.”

“I can make it,” said Buck.

Christopher snorted, “What, afraid you’ll go gay if you hold hands with me, Bucky?”

Buck flushed, “Don’t call me that.”

“What? Gay or Bucky?”

“Guys,” said Ken, “we don’t have time for this.” But he was almost glad to hear them at it. It was a bit of normalcy. What passed for normalcy now. Levity’s poorer cousin in the apocalypse.

Christopher slipped across the gate. White splashes rose around his feet as he fairly danced over the buried concrete, miniature explosions that quieted instantly as he passed.

He reached the opposite bank and reached held out his hand. “Come on, Bucky.”

Buck snorted. “I will punch you one of these days.”

Christopher still didn’t smile, but a trace of his old voice returned. “You gotta get across first. I’ve got fifty you don’t make it without dunking like a donut.”

Buck grabbed Ken’s hand and edged out onto the gate. Unlike Christopher, he slid rather than walking, his feet pushing through the water so it didn’t explode but simply sluiced around him.

He couldn’t reach all the way without letting go of Hope or Ken, so he dropped Ken’s hand and walked the last two steps. A bad moment when it looked like he was going to pitch sideways, but Christopher danced his way back out and grabbed his elbow.

“I just gave up fifty bucks for you, old man.”

Buck muttered something under his breath. But he made it to the other side. He passed Hope to Christopher, then reached out over the gate, his longer arm going nearly halfway over.

Ken passed Maggie to him. She was never without contact. She smiled at him as she went.

Then Ken. No one on this side to help him. But he never worried about falling. Not now.

Maggie was still smiling as he stepped onto dry ground.

Then the smile waned. Her face drew tight.

Ken didn’t have to look behind him to know what she saw.

The others were after them.

62

The field beyond the canal smelled like onion.

Ken had seen scallion fields before, but always from the confines of the family car, passing the fields of foot-tall spires in their neat rows that seemed to flip like pages in a book as they drove by.

Now, standing among them, the smell was almost overwhelming. The rain that pounded down made the mud slippery as they ran.

There was nowhere to hide.

The scallions stood only as high as his shins. Clusters of green that sprouted from the dark earth in leafy spike-clusters that whipped past the group as they ran. The field went on for hundreds of yards. Ken wished he and the others were in a corn field, though it was the wrong season for it. Something they could get lost in, could weave around and lose sight of the person – people? – following them.

He had the impulse to drop to the ground. A futile gesture, but one that was nearly overwhelming nonetheless. Like ostrich DNA was built into some central part of him, the need to bury his head in the sand rearing up at the worst possible time.

He forced himself on. But held back at the same time. He could have outpaced the others, especially Maggie and Buck, but they all ran in a tight group. They had been separated once, and none of them were willing to part again.

He risked a glance back.

A huge form leaped across the irrigation canal. Elijah. Either he hadn’t seen the bridge they used to ford the water, or simply hadn’t deigned to use it.

He landed on the other side of the bank. A prodigious jump that probably would have made Ken start clapping in admiration in any other circumstances. Now, though, it just made him feel leaden with fear.

The rain drowned everything in mud. It dragged at their feet. Leeched their speed away.

And, unfortunately for Elijah, it also wore away the bank of the canal. He barely landed before his feet fell out from beneath him. His arms wheeled a single time, a huge pair of circles that seemed like he was trying to take the air. A giant bird that had suddenly and unexpectedly been stripped of its ability to fly.

He fell backward. Dropped out of sight into the canal. Ken saw a single hand raised – a hand that was quickly swept downstream with the current.

The hand disappeared.

This time Ken came even closer to clapping. But he almost stumbled, and that brought him back to the reality of the fact that they were still running for their lives.

Worse, he realized that another form had made it across the gate. Smaller. So surefooted it seemed like he wasn’t balancing but simply walking across the water.

Ken’s group already had a good lead. The rain obscured things.

But there was only one person who moved like that.

Aaron.

63

“Guys,” panted Christopher.

“I see it,” said Ken.

“See what?” said Buck. He glanced back. “Oh.” That was all he said, but the single syllable conveyed a wealth of worry.

Maggie said nothing. Nor did she look back. She would not waste the effort. She was totally zeroed in on the only job that mattered to her: putting one foot in front of the other, adding inch after inch, yard after yard to their flight.

The rain slammed down, then lightened a bit, then pummeled them again. Ken was reminded of sparring matches he’d been in with some of the better fighters. People so good they could toy with him. They pounded him, then backed off long enough for him to regain his breath, then went back on the attack.

Toying with him.

So Mother Nature was against them as well, eh? Well, that figured.

Buck slipped. Almost went to one knee. Righted himself. Ken thought it was mostly because he didn’t want to let Hope touch the ground. The big man grimaced as he ran. Ken couldn’t be sure if he’d twisted something or if he was just mad at himself for the near fall.

They were almost halfway through the field. A surprise: Ken hadn’t thought they would make it this far.

Not that it mattered much. He glanced back.

Aaron was still coming. Not impossibly fast, but fast enough. Slow and steady in the downpour – but this wasn’t a story of tortoise and hare, but tortoise and slower tortoise. He was going to catch them. If not in this field, then in the next one. Or the one after that.

Ken looked around for something they could use. A weapon. A way to even the odds. But all he saw was empty land, broken only by crops and farm equipment. There wasn’t even a tractor they could use to escape. Just watering equipment, a few sheds that he knew simply housed pumps or electrical relays. Maybe a few tools, but that wasn’t worth the time it would take to check out.

Aaron had a gun. And in the game of gun, water, tools, gun beat everything.

Ken kept looking around. Just water and tools, water and tools, water –

He almost stumbled. Realizing….

“Buck,” he said, and pointed. “Do you know how to get that thing moving?”

Buck looked. “Yeah.” But he looked confused. “So?”

Ken grinned. “Where do we go to start it?”

64

Ken veered to the side. A slight angle that would hopefully get them there without lengthening the run so much that Aaron caught up to them. He also hoped he was taking them to the right spot.

Apparently he was, because Buck didn’t object. Halfway there, the big man suddenly realized what they were going to do. Not just what his part was, but what the point was. He glanced back and said, “I don’t know if we have time for this.”

“I’m open to better ideas,” said Ken.

Buck was silent. Nothing better, apparently.

“Guys, what are we doing?” said Christopher.

“I’ll tell you if you promise never to call me Bucky again,” said the big man. He was barely panting, Ken realized. Apparently the contractor was in good shape.

Ken realized he wasn’t panting, either. The workouts at the dojo had kept him in good stead.

Christopher didn’t respond. Either because he’d figured out where they were going or because the deal Buck had offered just wasn’t worth it to him.

Maggie said nothing. Still focused entirely on the run. On saving her children.

Sally, as ever, padded in silence. Wet and likely tired, but uncomplaining. Touching the sleeping/unconscious girls, licking and nipping at their trailing feet. Kisses from a cat that normally would consider preying on something so small.

They made it.

Buck didn’t put Hope down, just started fumbling with the controls. He glanced back. So did Ken.

Aaron was still coming. Near enough now that they could see his bad arm dangling at his side. His good hand holding the gun.

“This is going to be close,” said Buck.

65

“Is it going to start?” said Christopher. Apparently he’d figured out what they were doing.

“Should,” grunted Buck.

He made a last movement.

The sound of rushing water. A sudden increase in the rain-sounds. The squeak and grind of metal and rubber.

A lot of people didn’t know that, before the Change, Idaho was actually a high-tech state. Over seventy percent of its exports were in the science and technology sector, and it had been one of the leading areas in semiconductor technology since the nineteen seventies.

For all that, though, most people thought of it as a primarily agrarian state. And one of its most interesting features was the integration of science and agriculture, of suburban life with rural industry. Subdivisions of upper-class homes sat surrounded by farmland.

The farms were everywhere. Everyone grew accustomed to them. And not just the farms, but the features of the farms. The propane tanks that sat on so many of them. The rusted farm equipment that seemed to be part and parcel of many plots. The tractors chewing their way across fields like solitary locusts.

Even the huge center pivot irrigation systems just became part of the landscape; one more invisibility to be seen but unseen.

Still, they never failed to amaze visitors, to arouse curiosity when seen for the first time.

They were many large farms’ answer to home sprinkler systems. Only instead of a small sprinkler head that popped up at the corners of a lawn and spit out a bit of water once a day, this was a massive object that stretched half the length of a field and resembled nothing so much as the desiccated spine of some strange beast.

The irrigation system was a huge pipe, suspended by wheels soldered to it in an A-frame every eighty to one hundred feet along its length. In between the wheels, sprinkler hoses dangled. The whole thing was connected at the center of the field to a turbine that turned it on a center axis, allowing it to travel around the field, watering the entirety of it in a grand circle over the course of hours or days, depending on the speed of the motor and settings. Most got water from wells that pumped from the underground rivers that flowed beneath the Gem State.

The rushing noise of the huge pipe increased as the water rushed along its length. The wheels turned. The gaunt construction moved, its far length held fast by the pivot as though it were playing the world’s slowest game of crack-the-whip.

The sprinklers spewed water in a white torrent that mixed with the already-falling rain. Ken felt momentarily bad for the farmer that owned this land. His crops were probably going to be ruined by the overwatering.

“That isn’t going to stop Aaron for long,” said Christopher.

“No,” agreed Ken. “But he can’t see us now.” He pointed at the white curtain between them and the cowboy who had become their hunter. “We can move to the side and he can’t see us.”

Maggie finally spoke. Desperation and exhaustion battled for possession of her voice. “But where?” she said. “There’s still nowhere to go.”

66

Maggie was wrong. There was one place to go. Not a place she was going to like. But one place was better than no place.

Next to the pivot of the sprinkler system there were several buckets, gray plastic containers about two feet long, a foot and a half wide, and a foot deep.

“Everyone grab one of those,” said Ken.

They did without question.

“Come on,” he said. Began running. They followed, again without asking. Even though he was leading them in a direction that probably made no sense to any of them.

Back where they had come.

He looked behind. Aaron hadn’t come through the sprinklers yet. Ken doubted that was because the cowboy couldn’t get through the streams of water. More likely he was just being careful; wary of a trap that would take him out.

Good. They needed the extra time.

“We can’t go back to the train,” said Christopher. “Theresa’s there. And there’s at least one gun still in play.”

“I know,” said Ken.

“Can’t just cross back over the canal, either,” said Buck. “We’re not that far down from the train. She’ll probably see if we do that.”

“I know that, too.”

They ran in silence.

Ken looked back again. He thought he saw a dark form in the water of the irrigation sprinkler.

Aaron stepped through.

He looked to his right, then straight ahead. Both of the logical directions the group might have taken.

Then he looked to his left. Saw them. The one direction that made no sense.

He once more gave chase.

67

They couldn’t outrun him. There were two people carrying children, and the other two wouldn’t leave them behind.

Ken wasn’t a math teacher, but that was a simple enough equation even for him to figure out.

So they had to have a vehicle. No tractor sat in view, no sturdy work truck hunkered in the field. Whoever ran this farm must have been offsite the day of the Change. Working another field, perhaps. Dead in a field of turnips somewhere, or one of those who had run madly after the train.

But there was no machine that would carry them away from Aaron. And that meant they would have to rely on the one thing that moved faster than he did.

The irrigation canal.

In dry weather, the canal water could move quickly – a few miles an hour.

Now….

“In,” said Ken.

“WHAT?” shouted Christopher.

Ken looked back. Aaron was closer than he should have been. Ken felt suddenly like he was starring in a Terminator remake. Only this Terminator was someone who had once been a friend.

Still was a friend. That was the worst part. Ken believed that Aaron still cared for all of them. But he was going to capture them. Decide the best course.

And then execute it.

Good people didn’t always agree.

And Ken couldn’t take a chance that Aaron would come down on their side.

He looked back at the others. “Hold the buckets. Use them as flotation.”

“No way.” Christopher was shaking his head. Backing away.

“So you climb skyscrapers, but you’re afraid of a little water, huh?” said Buck. He was already down on his bottom, scooting to the edge of the canal. Hope was slung high on his shoulder. Ken hoped he could hold her high enough to keep her safe.

“Dude, that’s just crazy. This is suicide.”

Ken shrugged. “Fine. Stay and wait for Aaron.”

Christopher sighed. Then forced a smile to his face. A long way from the smile he had worn before, but it still gladdened Ken to see it. “You only live once, right?”

He jumped in. Dove right over Buck’s head, into the canal. His bucket was the only thing that didn’t disappear below the water. In a moment he surfaced, clutched the bucket, and was swept away.

Ken reached out a hand.

Maggie took it.

Buck was halfway into the water. The current grabbed him as well. Dragged him off.

Ken helped Maggie switch the carrier and Liz around to its back-carry configuration, hitching it as high as he could. He tried to take it from her halfway through the process, but she bared her teeth. Half-joking… but half-serious.

Ken pushed his bucket at her.

“No,” she said, pushing it back.

“Take it,” he insisted. And bared his teeth in a mockery of the expression she had just made. It made him wonder what she thought of his new Beverly Hillbillies look, the gap in his front teeth no doubt presenting quite the sight.

She didn’t seem to notice. Just kissed his cheek as she took the extra bucket.

She slid into the water. And slid away.

68

Sally looked at Ken with an expression that he couldn’t help but think looked exasperated, as though the snow leopard were saying, “Don’t you know cats don’t bathe?” The cat loped off on the side of the canal. Apparently rain was acceptable, but jumping into an irrigation ditch was an unreasonable demand. Still, Ken didn’t worry about the cat’s ability to keep pace.

He moved to the edge of the bank himself.

Gunfire barked. He didn’t know if Aaron was firing at him, or just shooting in the air. He hoped it was a warning shot. But it didn’t change his next move. His family was sweeping down the canal, so he was hardly going to wait where he was, hands up and hoping for mercy.

He jumped the last bit and landed in the canal.

The water swept over him.

As a kid he had always thought it would be fun to do this. To jump in with an inner tube, maybe a snorkel. Or just go with nothing but his arms and legs and skill as a swimmer. Every kid he knew thought it would be cool.

Every kid, as it turned out, was wrong.

The water invaded his mouth and nose, turning him into a sputtering wreck. He thought he would be able to swim, at least in a rudimentary fashion, but his feet resisted his mental direction. Instead of kicking behind him they kept stabbing down, feeling for ground that was too far to reach. Still, they kept trying, and kept dragging Ken below the surface as they did.

His hands swept back and forth. And like his feet they seemed more intent on finding something to hold than they were on swimming.

He was going to drown unless he could get himself under control.

Ken struggled. His clothes, already saturated when he jumped in, dragged him down. His shoes had somehow converted to lead-soled diving boots.

A Bruce Lee quote came to him: “Be formless… shapeless, like water.” The old master had been talking about fighting forms, and Ken wondered how he would have felt being dunked in an Idaho ditch.

He went under. Came up for a moment. Went under again. Felt himself tiring.

And slammed into something. Hard.

69

Ken hit it with his right side, a bruising impact that probably would have sent him into a tailspin of agony if it hadn’t been just one more of a thousand pains he’d already suffered.

As it was, he barely felt it. More so because when he hit the obstruction the water surged and pushed him upward. At first he wondered what was happening, then realized: the gate! He had hit the concrete box of the flow control gate that they had earlier crossed. A lateral move that had taken long minutes on land had spanned short seconds in the canal’s torrent.

Ken reached the top of the gate, pulling himself over. He gasped for air. Oxygen mixed with the water in his lungs and the moisture in the air, but it was sweet all the same.

He looked forward. Couldn’t see much, but he thought he spotted a few forms floating down the canal. Maybe something slinking next to it. Seemed like they were a long way away. He couldn’t tell if they were moving under their own locomotion. If Maggie or the others hadn’t been watching, they could have hit the concrete headfirst and been knocked out. Drowned seconds later.

Then he realized if that had happened they likely wouldn’t have gone over the gate. He would have found them here, floating on this side.

He looked behind him. No sign of Aaron. Or none that he could see. But he doubted the cowboy had just given up.

Ken got his palms on the slick top of the gate. He pulled himself up, sliding across on his belly, feeling the concrete bite him through his shirt. He was still wearing the shirt Dorcas had given him days ago, that ridiculous, long-sleeved thing that said, “I went to BOISE and all I got was this STUPID SHIRT (and a raging case of the CLAP)” across the front. The sleeves were in tatters. He couldn’t tell if the words remained. He suddenly hoped the concrete was scratching them off; suddenly hoped that none of his old students would catch him wearing it.

He realized how foolish both hopes were. He switched to hoping that his friends were still alive, and that he himself would survive the next minutes.

He made it halfway over the concrete. Then a bit more than halfway. A tipping point. He slid like a fish over the top, splashed down on the other side.

The current held him once again.

70

He was the world’s slowest, wettest, most unwieldy pinball in a machine designed by a sadist.

Bouncing back and forth from bank to bank, mud getting into his ears each time he collided with land, water ripping past his eyes so fast he was blind, the sound of the current and the splash of the rain so loud hearing was impossible.

Somehow Ken found the presence of mind to realize that he had never specified a point for him and the others to get out of the canal. No rendezvous point to shoot for, to try and meet up.

No plan is perfect, Ken.

Then he was under again. Kicking frantically, hoping he was kicking up instead of down. Knowing it probably didn’t matter. His clothing and his shoes kept pulling him, pulling him.

His hands were cupped. The one swim teacher he’d had – a young woman named Carrie who seemed so old to an eight-year-old boy but who was probably all of nineteen – would have been proud at the way he tried to catch the water. “Pick an apple and put it in your pocket,” she always said.

Only the frigging apples kept falling apart in his hands, kept disintegrating in a frothy flow that was impossible to catch or use to pull himself forward.

At last, in desperation, he let himself go limp.

“Be water, my friend.”

Maybe good ol’ Bruce had gone for a dunk or two in an irrigation canal at high tide. The second Ken loosened up and stopped struggling, the sinking sensation, if not disappeared, then lessened significantly. His body lengthened out, his feet actually felt like they were trying to surface instead of bury themselves in the muck at the bottom of the canal.

He caught his first apple. Carrie would have been proud.

Look, Mom! I did it!

Ken’s parents had been dead for a decade. Mom died of breast cancer, Dad died in a car accident a year later. They died before Derek was born. Why was he thinking of them?

Not ready to meet you yet, Mom and Dad. Hope you understand.

Put an apple in his pocket. Pick another.

The swimming was clumsy. Awkward. But the rain he felt on the occasions he managed to turn up his face and grab a quick breath sounded like the applause of a beautiful older girl in a blue bathing suit. “Great job, Kenny! Pick those apple trees clean, kiddo!”

Another thought intruded into the almost-pleasant dream. It cast away the remembrance of something that might have been a first crush if he’d been old enough to understand the concept. Ripped it in two like old cloth.

Gates. Other gates.

The flow control gates came in all shapes, all configurations. Ken didn’t know if the next one would be anything like the last one.

He switched back to his previous attempts to right himself. The water grabbed him again, trying to push him down like the one big boy in the pool had done every time Carrie’s back turned.

What was his name?

Does it matter?

He saw the gate.

Unlike the first one – the one he slammed into – this one extended well out of the water. Ken couldn’t see past it, didn’t see how any of his friends could have gotten past it.

Then he realized that the water level wasn’t nearly high enough for this to be a closed flow control gate. That would be a dam, with water surging high against its back.

He had time for a quick breath. Then the water dragged him completely under.

Into the concrete box.

71

Ken passed from twilight to midnight in an instant. One moment he was in the green-gray of the rain and the speeding sluice the canal had become. The next moment he was in blackness as he passed into a concrete tunnel.

He collided with the sides of the box. Piece of skin came away. He screamed. Couldn’t help it. Bubbles rose. Had nowhere to go. Clustered around his nose and face, but gave no light to his eyes.

The dark lasted forever, and Ken knew that sometimes canals shifted sideways. Passed under street intersections or long stretches of empty land. He hoped this wasn’t one of those moments.

No. Can’t be. Saw the others.

But had he seen them before the gate – in which case this could be a sideways, subterranean shift – or after?

He had just enough time to panic.

Be water.

He floated. Began to sink. It was a good thing: his body stopped hitting the concrete.

Twilight came again. Or perhaps the dawn.

A hand grabbed him by the hair. Yanked him up.

A voice.

“Look at this. The big fish that didn’t get away.”

Ken was dragged, sputtering, to the bank. He grabbed a patch of weeds. They were spiny thistles edged with thorns that cut him cruelly. Blood ran with the rain, a pink reminiscent of the color that came when the zombies were hit in the head.

It was the color of a man who had left the pinball machine.

The hand finally let go of his hair. Ken looked over and saw Christopher smiling tightly at him. The younger man’s other hand was buried in the weeds as well, also bloody.

On the bank: Buck, tall. Holding Hope.

Maggie. Liz bound to her.

They were waterlogged as stray dogs in a hurricane. But standing, neither seeming afraid of the girls’ health. Or no more than before at least.

Sally was even there. His tail twitched from time to time. Almost as though he was saying, “I don’t know why you’re all acting so upset about what just happened to you. After all, I was the one who got rained on.”

Ken wrestled his way up the bank. The mud kept peeling away under his hands as though the canal wanted to keep him; had claimed him as its own and was loathe to give him up. Still, he made it up before Christopher and reached down to give the other man a hand.

Christopher came up, huffing and puffing. Again, Ken wasn’t breathing as hard as he thought he would. He pulled Christopher the rest of the way, then said, “You need to hit the gym, man.”

“I’ll sign up at the next Gold’s.”

Ken clapped him on the shoulder. He turned to Maggie. Hugged her harder than he’d ever hugged anyone. Careful not to crush Liz, but still managing to nearly meld his wife’s flesh with his own.

“Still sure I don’t gross you out?” he said.

“You keep saying that,” she answered with a shake of her head. “You’re beautiful.”

He smiled. Had a moment to feel something… odd.

What the –

Then a shot rang out. He felt something punch him in the back.

Turned.

Elijah was running toward them farther down the bank than they had been.

They hadn’t accounted for the big man. For the man who had already fallen into the same canal, had been dragged the same direction they had gone. Hadn’t accounted for his toughness, his persistence.

For his gun.

Another shot.

Another punch. This one hit Ken’s shoulder.

He fell to his knees.

Someone was screaming. A high-pitched scream. Could have been Maggie. Might have been Buck, too. The guy had a surprisingly high voice for such a big man.

No, probably Maggie.

Elijah was within twenty feet. Gun pointed at Ken. At his face.

Maybe he’ll miss.

But he hadn’t missed at longer range. In the rain. While running.

“Sorry,” yelled the big man. “The world. We’re saving the world!”

He stood carefully. But switched his aim. To Lizzy. Strapped again across Maggie’s belly.

A shot that would likely kill them both.

72

Ken reached up a hand. His left.

He stared at it. Just for a moment. An instant. Too long, perhaps, given what was happening around him, but still –

Elijah was set.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. The sound was a whisper.

The shot rang out. Maggie screamed.

And did not fall.

Elijah’s head exploded.

The man’s body flung backward. Rolled down the bank. Into the canal they had all navigated with such cruel care.

Gone.

Ken didn’t understand. And almost didn’t care.

He looked down.

Blood soaked his black shirt. “I went to BOISE and all I got was this STUPID SHIRT (and a raging case of the CLAP.” He snorted and more blood exploded from his nose and mouth. Even that was funny. It was all so terribly funny. So damn funny.

Footsteps sounded in the rain.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded Buck.

A voice answered. Thick and gravelly. A voice Ken knew instinctively belonged to the type of man you did not screw with.

He knew he should be curious about what happened.

He wasn’t.

He grinned. Gritted his teeth. That strange feeling – that wrong feeling – was still there.

He lifted his left hand. It was hard. He did it anyway.

He could hear his pulse. Double pumps in time with the surges of red across his shirt.

Lub-dub.

Lub-dub.

“Not now,” said the other voice. The new voice. Maggie was still screaming. “Any more of them out there?”

“Maybe,” said Christopher.

Lub-dub.

Lub-dub.

Ken couldn’t look away from his hand. Couldn’t stop gritting his teeth.

He suddenly remembered kicking Aaron.

Climbing around on the train.

Running faster than the others, without losing his breath.

Making a deadly swim without benefit of any flotation device, and again emerging without losing his breath.

Lub-dub.

Lub-dub.

Fighting off zombies with a knife and then with the train coupler. And how heavy did those things have to be, to bind freight cars together? But he had swung it like it was nothing more than a baseball bat.

Lub-dub.

Lub-dub.

Most of all, he remembered how the zombies swarmed the train. And how he had grown resistant to their call to give in to their attacks.

How they slowed down at the end. Slowed down when he wished it.

Lub-dub.

Lub… dub.

Heart beating slower.

He looked down. Blood no longer spurting out. Just dripping.

He slumped to his back.

Lub…

… dub…

Looking at his hand. Gritting his teeth.

Feeling the tooth. The tooth he had lost.

The tooth that was now there again.

Lub…

…

… dub…

Looking at his hand.

The hand he had mutilated himself.

The ring and pinky fingers he had cut off.

Nothing but stubs.

Lub…

…

…

… dub…

The stumps glistened. Not from the swim in the canal.

Coated with yellow. A waxy substance he had seen before.

And small nubs in their centers. Nail-like growths.

Lub…

…

…

…

… dub…

Ken’s hand fell to his side.

Did I really hear him? Was Derek’s voice in my head… was it real?

What’s happening to me?

He felt Maggie hold him. His face to the sky.

His mouth fell open. He remembered that was what happened when you Changed.

His heart stopped.

And Ken Strickland died.

END OF BOOK FIVE

THE SAGA WILL CONTINUE IN BOOK SIX

THE COLONY: BURIED

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michaelbrent Collings is a full-time screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including The Colony Saga, Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale, and the bestselling YA series The Billy Saga.

Follow him through Twitter @mbcollings or on Facebook at facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings.

OTHER NOVELS
BY MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS

THE COLONY SAGA:

THE COLONY: GENESIS (The Colony, Vol. 1)

THE COLONY: RENEGADES (The Colony, Vol. 2)

THE COLONY: DESCENT (The Colony, Vol. 3)

THE COLONY: VELOCITY (The Colony, Vol. 4)

THE COLONY OMNIBUS

CRIME SEEN

STRANGERS

DARKBOUND

BLOOD RELATIONS:
A GOOD MORMON GIRL MYSTERY

THE HAUNTED

APPARITION

THE LOON

MR. GRAY (aka THE MERIDIANS)

RUN

RISING FEARS

YOUNG ADULT AND
MIDDLE GRADE FICTION:

THE BILLY SAGA

BILLY: MESSENGER OF POWERS (BOOK 1)

BILLY: SEEKER OF POWERS (BOOK 2)

BILLY: DESTROYER OF POWERS (BOOK 3)

HOOKED: A TRUE FAERIE TALE

KILLING TIME

Table of Contents

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- 2
- 3
- 4
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