Chapter 13: Mother

 

The facility, it’s close now. The further they run, the more they see of the terrible wall that’s gone up around Pleasance, this alabaster prison that’s reached out from the colossus. And it’s just as Esther said. There’s an opening, right in the center, where no wall stands, leading straight to Vertex. The road is bare, almost clean. Ahead of them there’s only silence and sanctuary. Behind, a ravening stampede of the dead, running for all they can muster on broken, rotted limbs.

This is a trap. It just has to be.

They push through, out of the gap in the wall, and into Vertex. And then what? Robbie will have them exactly where he wanted. But maybe Esther had the right idea all along. Whoever built the wall did it for a reason, and they left this portal here precisely to let the survivors escape. There has to be something good out of this. Who would be so insane as to lead them out of the frying pan and into the fire? Things simply can’t get any worse.

Even over the rumble of hundreds of dead feet trampling the earth, over the thump of Jarod’s heart threatening to explode in his body, he can still hear the cameras far on the wall above him, whirring, clicking, following, watching. Hargrove. That’s it. This has to be his work. Unless Robbie was telling the truth and Nessa really is alive, and that she’s waiting to help them. But if he was telling the truth, then he really meant to help them all along. And if he came seeking their help too, then that means –

A rock skitters off the path as Jarod stubs his shoe against it. The break in momentum sends him off balance, and it takes a well-timed save, then a massive shove from Gabriel’s direction to get him running again.

“Move, Samuels,” Tyler shouts. “Focus. Almost there.”

So close. He’s right. Magpie and Daniel are picking up the lead, and Jarod’s surprised when he realizes that Esther is almost abreast of them, just nearly at the head of the pack. It could be something about her being an anomaly, something genetic that makes her physically stronger than the rest of them, giving her an advantage in spite of her age.

He recalls that his scar hasn’t hurt very much in a while, not since he’s discovered Esther’s secret. Maybe he’s more comfortable around her now, or maybe being exposed to her and her power somehow dulls the way his scar goes painful in the presence of anomalies. He picks up his pace, hitting the ground faster. That really shouldn’t be his concern considering his chest hurts enough right now from struggling for air, his heart beating, thrashing at an alarming rate.

Almost there. The lights dotting the compound and the open parking lot beckon to them. There’s the fence that goes around the colossus, as humongous and as white as the first day Jarod entered its blighted halls. And where the fence ends –

“No,” Gabriel wails, his lungs heaving.

The gate. The gate is shut.

The compound is barren in spite of all the lights, the guardhouses and outposts where the night crawlers should be standing watch empty. The colossus is devoid of life, perhaps the way it was always meant to be, now that Paragon has scoured it clean.

“No. Fucking no.” Tyler hurls his bag at the ground. It kicks up dust as it scrapes across the earth, then stops at the base of the fence.

“We don’t give up,” Magpie says, eyes huge and fierce. “This isn’t where we die.”

Familiar words, Jarod knows, and even with despair thrumming in his heart he knows she’s right.

“Up the fence,” he shouts. “Up and over. We can make it.”

“Guns,” Daniel says. “What if they have guns?”

“The towers are empty. He’s right.” Tyler picks his bag up off the ground, slings it over his shoulder. “There’s no one to stop us.” And that, in itself, might also be a problem. Why is the facility so bare?

Snarls and howls echo from behind them. Jarod whips around, his mouth going dry as he takes in the reality of the swarm of abominations bearing down on them. Dozens, scores of zombies. Could be a hundred, could be more, shrieking and rattling, broken limbs driving them ever forward, uncaring even as pieces of them slough off their bodies.

No time to think. “Up and over,” he shouts.

Tyler gives Daniel a boost, watching intently and holding his arms out to make sure he doesn’t fall. Gabriel follows, taking so easily to the climb that he may as well be a spider monkey, fingers and toes finding their place in the gaps in the wire almost on instinct. Magpie goes next, speedily, at that, only slowing to make sure that all her stuff – especially her sword – is strapped on tight.

The three of them clear the fence and land on the other side, Gabriel looking about warily, though there still doesn’t look like there’s any danger from within the facility. Jarod bites his lip. Maybe not just yet.

“I don’t know if I can make it,” Esther says.

“You think I care?” Tyler shouts, the muscles in his neck bulging. “You have to. We’re not leaving without you. Get the hell up there.”

In a different time, that sort of talk would have gotten Tyler slapped right in the teeth. But right now he’s right, and maybe it’s the crudest way for him to tell Esther how much he cares, but the harshness has its effect. She nods, then begins the laborious climb up, the weight of her body making the task more difficult than for the others. Tyler hovers beneath her, Jarod by his side, the both of them watching to make sure that this strange, somber woman who has somehow become both mother and friend survives this stampede with them.

They’re close now. The earth shakes, just from the impact and terrible force of so many undead bodies scrambling for the fence, claws outstretched in hunger and desperation.

Tyler doesn’t even give Jarod the benefit of a second glance. “Race you to the top,” he shouts. He makes a running start, leaps onto the fence, then clambers with liquid grace. Jarod doesn’t even consider his behavior alarming or inconsiderate anymore.

“Come on,” Gabriel shouts through the fence. “Jarod, come on.”

He swears he can feel an oncoming rush of air following the horde. He swears he can smell their decay on the wind, their slaver flying in revolting droplets. He straps his club to his back and reaches for the fence. The metal of it is ice cold from the night. His arms strain as they pull his weight inch by precious inch up the fence.

The howling is closer.

Don’t look down. It’s not about heights, not that Jarod even has any fear of them. It’s that knowledge that something’s coming, that these may very well be his last moments if he doesn’t make it. But he has time. The horde is still far off. He has scant seconds, but that’s all he needs.

Until the wire fence starts swaying.

Don’t look down. But he does, staring wide-eyed at the ravenous mob of dead things pressing against the fence, fingers prodding and clawing at the gaps in the wire. They’re trying to climb. They’re trying to follow, and that’ll definitely be the end of it.

He reaches the top of the fence, swinging his legs over. This isn’t like the Hive, no thickness of wood across the wall to allow him to straddle it. Suddenly it feels all so familiar, the day he fell off the barricade when Britta slammed full force into it, when he fell and broke his leg.

“Come down. Samuels. Hurry.”

He looks down. Twelve, fifteen feet. On one side, Gabriel and the others screaming, imploring him to jump. On the other, twenty, thirty, suddenly fifty dead bodies pushing up against the fence, all trying to occupy the same space, like water pressing against a dam. But this isn’t water. The zombies are perfectly solid, and when sixty, or seventy of them are all shoving against the fence, sooner or later, it’s going to come crashing down.

The fence sways again. Fuck this. Jarod climbs down a few feet, then jumps down the rest of the way. If they run, they’ll have enough time to put distance between themselves and the horde. Maybe they can force their way into the facility. Briefly, he wonders if his override codes will still work. He almost laughs. That’s if they make it across the compound. That’s if, by some miracle, nothing kills them across the way. They start to run.

But the fence starts to creak.

“Keep running,” Tyler yells. “Don’t look back. We can make it.”

If he only knew how dangerous Vertex is, the bowels of the colossus perhaps as deadly as the swarm pursuing them. Maybe the facility has been picked clean of bodies both living and dead – or maybe it’s teeming with zombies. One way to find out.

They reach the main building, and Jarod could almost be glad for the sight of the lights being on in the facade, except for the darkness by the main doors. He sees the reason why, and his heart sinks.

In place of the glass sliding doors that once heralded the entrance is a smooth metal surface, split in the middle by the tiniest seam. It’s reinforced, the sort of structural defenses the facility can implement in emergencies. Nothing at hand can punch through these doors, not grenades, not even something as powerful as Britta. They must have sealed all the entrances the night Robbie turned, just after Jarod and Gabriel left. But if that’s what happened, how did Robbie get out?

Jarod curses. No time for that now. They still have one option: the access panels. The security override should let him in with voice biometrics, but that’s assuming his imprint hasn’t been scrubbed from the records. But who would have the time to do that in Paragon’s aftermath? He curses again. Whoever built the wall around Pleasance. That’s who.

He skids to a halt even as Tyler barrels straight for the reinforced doors, hammering at them impotently with his fists.

“Let us in,” he shouts, his voice trembling with an unfamiliar desperation, his features fraught with worry. “Please. Someone.”

“You’ll hurt yourself,” Gabriel says, pulling him off. “Torres, stop.”

A huge metal bang signals the sound of the wire fence collapsing completely, striking the ground. A cloud of dust and earth hangs in the air, but just for the briefest moment as the horde continues its relentless procession. Those closest to the fence before it fell wriggle and stumble along with crushed limbs and broken bodies. The rest run, ravening and howling, their dry, rasping voices shearing through the night air.

“The panels,” Gabriel says.

“I know.” Jarod reaches for one of them, hands shaking, his fingers probing for the button built into it to activate the system. It’s when he notices that the display is dimmed. It’s when he sees the frayed wires that have been ripped out of the wall.

Gabriel looks on, slack-jawed. “No.”

“Maybe I can fix it,” Magpie says, the panic in her eyes betraying her uncertainty. “Let me try.”

“There’s no time.” Esther points to the far end of the compound. The dead pour forth, an endless, roiling wave of corruption.

“We shouldn’t have come here,” Jarod mutters.

“Then where else?” Gabriel’s words come out in a wail. He stares at his hands, the corners of his eyes creased. He seems so much smaller.

Jarod pulls Gabriel in, burying his nose in his hair. At least they’ll be together. Vertex has taken enough away from them, but it’ll never cleave them apart.

From behind them, Esther sighs. “Then we don’t have a choice.” She calmly sets her bag on the ground, pats it down, like a pet, then unzips it.

“What are we doing?” Tyler snaps, running his fingers through his hair. “We don’t have time for this.”

“If you have a better idea, Torres, now’s the time to spit it out.” Esther pulls out the contents of the bag – guns, over half a dozen of them. She lays them across the asphalt, treating each with the reverence one gives to a favorite toy, a piece of heirloom jewelry.

Armory Esther. That’s what they used to call her when they worked at Vertex. Jarod always thought she just worked in the armory, never once thinking that the woman might actually have a thing for guns. Several guns, it looks like. How the hell did she carry those all the way across the city? Jarod shakes his head. Anomalies. He’ll never understand them.

“Everyone pick one, but leave the assault rifles.”

Tyler stares, agog, before his mouth takes over again. “We’re going to attract more of them doing this. This isn’t going to work.”

“Again,” Esther says, with all the even-toned patience of a mother. “If you have a better idea, tell me now. If not, shut up and grab a goddamn gun. Either wait for them to reach us and rip us to shreds, or we take out as many as we can.” Esther nudges the side of her nose with one thumb, her eyes hard, with all the authority and resignation of a weathered general. “So do you want to die like a piece of meat, or do you want to go down kicking and screaming?”

“Let’s fuck them up.” Magpie picks up a pistol. She looks at Jarod, forcing the bravest grin she can muster. “Rufus would have done the same.”

Her brother, one of Jarod’s only friends at work, and someone else lost to Paragon’s blight. He was a morgue-man at Vertex, in closer proximity to death than Jarod ever was. Somehow it seems fitting for Magpie to remember him this way.

It’s also a stark reminder that this is real. There are hundreds growling and running in a singular direction – straight for their throats – and this is where they all die.

Esther waves hurriedly at Tyler and Daniel. “Have either of you ever used a gun?”

“How hard can it be?” Cocky as always, even now. Tyler picks up a shotgun. Jarod smiles, despite himself. It suits him.

Daniel reaches for a pistol, the same as Jarod and Gabriel, their favored weapons. “Not without a fight,” he stammers, turning the gun over in his hands.

Esther shakes her head. “You’re all talking like this is over. We’re still breathing. Maybe we still have a shot at this.” She rolls her neck, cracks her knuckles, then breathes deep.

The air around Esther wavers, the way hot air does over the ground on a hot day in Pleasance, like in a mirage. And where there was one, now there are three. Jarod’s scar starts to burn.

“Holy shit,” Tyler says, gray eyes rounded. “No. No way.”

Magpie’s hand hovers over her mouth, just concealing her smile, the kind a kid would wear upon seeing something incredible for the very first time, the way a colorblind man first sees color. Her hand lingers, and she doesn’t speak.

“I knew it,” Daniel says. “You couldn’t possibly be human. You do so much.” It’s clear that he’s trying to keep his composure. Admirable, considering what he’s just seen – that, and the oncoming rush of charging corpses.

“If we live through this, I’ll explain everything,” the first Esther says. She nods at the other two, and all three go down on one knee. They each grimace at the sound of their joints popping, then, like a single unit, pick up the leftover guns.

Three old women hold three assault rifles aloft, faces frozen, nozzles barely wavering. This isn’t exactly what Jarod was expecting to see before he died, but whoever’s waiting on the other side for him has a great story coming.

He aims for the closest head he can see, his finger on the trigger. Beside him, Gabriel does the same, two hands on his gun, focusing.

“This is it,” Gabriel says.

“I guess so.” Jarod blinks the sweat out of his eyes. “Who knew it’d end this way, huh?”

Gabriel sniffles, then smiles.

“Hey. As long as we’re together.” Jarod winks. He never winks. Gabriel chuckles.

“Idiot.”

“I know.”

Gabriel bumps their shoulders together, just for a moment. “You’re the best.”

“I know.” Jarod smiles. If they’re going to be torn apart, at least they’ll be torn apart together. This is fucked up. This has all been fucked up. But it’s them in the end, and each other is all they have. “I love you, too.”

Any moment now and the dead will be upon them. Once they pass that lamppost in the center of the parking lot, it could be too late. Jarod clears his throat.

The first Esther licks her pink-stained lips, sticks her tongue out the corner of her mouth, then squints one eye.

“Fire.”

Gunshots riddle the air, shattering the night with their thunder, slamming into the oncoming horde with terrifying velocity. The bullets shred the first rank of the zombies, then the next, ripping them apart. Still they keep coming, every gun blast provoking them to howl louder, run faster, slash at the air harder.

Distant noises seem to come from all around the compound, from beyond, and it’s just as they feared. Somehow there are even more of the dead lingering in the wilderness. Six months of silence sent them dormant, but tonight, every bullet fired may as well be a dinner bell.

More creaking comes from the wire fences standing to either side of the compound. Jarod doesn’t need to turn and look to see what’s causing the noise. It’s the rest of the horde, any of them left out there, already attracted to the ruckus. They’ll run out of bullets soon. No way this ends well.

The main rank of the horde bears down upon them, dozens of feet away, and soon ten, and soon, close enough to thrust their twisted nails straight into Jarod’s throat. He can keep firing, or he can pull Gabriel in for one last embrace, a kiss goodbye before it’s too late. It’s a simple decision to make. He lowers his gun.

Then a zombie goes flying through the air.

“What the fuck,” Gabriel yells. “Did you all see that? What the fuck.”

Jarod’s heart pounds. He lifts his gun again, aiming for the sky, only barely relieved when he realizes that the zombie is spiraling away from them, hurtling relentlessly out of the way. There’s a monumental crash, and more zombies are thrown into the air, as if assaulted by some invisible force.

No. God no. It can’t be. Jarod’s scar throbs. The boy who gave him this split in his chest, he can’t still be alive. The first anomaly Jarod ever met, the last he’d ever hope to meet left a lasting impression on him, cutting through skin and flesh in a childlike attempt to look at his insides. The boy could move things with his mind, blow holes in concrete, stop bullets in midair, slice people open. This is his doing.

Jarod looks wildly around in search of a floating boy with blond hair and a cruel smile. He shudders, cowering away from their huddle, stepping back. Teddy. Teddy’s here, somewhere, and he’s playing with the horde, flinging them away like rag dolls because he wants to save the humans for himself. And when he’s done with the horde, he’s going to take them apart. He’s going to play with them again.

“Jarod?” Gabriel lowers his gun, reaching for Jarod’s arm, face creased with concern. “Jarod, are you okay?”

Irrational. He’s being irrational, but his chest hurts so much, and it’s hard to breathe, and he can’t even tell if it’s the scar or his lungs or his heart. Teddy. That bastard’s alive somehow, and he’s behind this. Jarod backs up against the facility, against the reinforced doors, then stumbles when he finds they’re no longer there.

The doors are open. How? When?

“Inside,” Jarod screams, barely able to get his voice out. “Everyone get inside.”

They dash through the opening. Jarod never knew he’d be relieved to come to the facility, but this is life and death. The building’s foyer is in darkness, but whatever’s in here can’t possibly be worse than what’s outside. But then Jarod lifts his head, remembering the words blazoned across the top of this hall. “For the betterment of mankind.”

“How do we bar the door?” Tyler shouts.

“We can’t,” Gabriel says. “We head deeper into the facility. We’ll find somewhere to hide. Jarod, come on.”

He snaps out of his reverie long enough to respond. “Okay. Deeper.” Not at all a tantalizing option, but the only one they have. He sprints forward into the darkness, possessed by a blind idiot courage, or a madman’s fear, and his heart almost stops when something gleaming snakes out of the darkness.

“Fuck.”

The thing, long and metallic, slithers across the ground like a viper, then rears up. It’s bigger than Jarod thought, as thick around as a flagpole. He holds up his hands in front of his chest as it sails straight for his body – then past him. The air whistles as the thing strikes out of the darkness, past the doorway, and into the night. Jarod turns to follow it with his gaze, and his mouth falls open.

How had he not seen this before? There are dozens of these things, squirming and writhing, all rooted in the darkness, forming a loose barricade by the door. The ones closest to the outside smash brutally into the oncoming dead, each blow decimating bones and limbs.

With huge sweeps they toss the zombies aside, driving with enough power to fling them through the air, scattering and killing all at once. One of them – a tentacle, Jarod sees now – shoots straight for a zombie’s head. Its skull explodes instantly in a rain of brain and bone.

Jarod realizes he isn’t the only one stunned into silence. Outside the tentacles continue their deliberate slaughter, holding the dead at bay effortlessly, slashing, smashing, striking at anything that comes too close to the doorway. Otherwise, within the foyer, all is silence.

Except for the footsteps coming out of the darkness. It’s almost familiar, the sound of it, a kind of tapping. No, clicking, more like. A clicking of heels. It can’t be.

A woman steps out of the shadows, her body encased in metal, gleaming in the same silvery hue as the snakes laying waste to the Paragon zombies. Her heels click with each step she takes. Where once there was a gash in her neck, right where Robbie bit out a chunk of her throat, there’s only perfect, snowy skin.

She lifts her hands forward and more of the tentacles shoot out of the blackness, like children obeying her command. As they splay to each side of her, seeking more things to smash and kill, the mass of tentacles could almost be like metallic wings. In this gloom, the woman could be a valkyrie sent to collect the dead, or an armor-clad angel come to save them all.

Jarod falls to his knees. “Nessa.”

The woman smiles. “It’s been a while, Jarod. We missed you.”