Part 48 (1/2)

Above him, the wreckage continued to s.h.i.+ft and groan. He blinked the dust from his eyes and saw movement through the web of metal that had landed on top of him. Cantrell and the other dead men were moving through that web, and they were close by, maybe ten or twelve feet above him at the most.

Anderson closed his eyes and prayed.

Paul listened to the sound of gunfire echoing through the superstructure. Three quick shots in succession. Anderson was in trouble. And wasting his ammunition, too. These weren't Hollywood zombies. They didn't go down with a well-placed shot to the brain. They were extensions of his father's will, meat puppets at the end of a wire. As long as his father had need of them, they would continue to advance.

Several of the dead men dropped from the wall and onto the platform. They were in front of him now. Others had him cut off from behind.

But they didn't advance on him. They stayed back a good twenty feet. Paul stayed perfectly still. One of the dead men pulled a section of corrugated metal off the wall, exposing an empty s.p.a.ce within. Paul looked into the blackness and knew it was a direct route into the center of the superstructure where the circular chamber, and his father, waited.

He scanned the faces of the dead men, and though their eyes were milky and vacant, he knew what they wanted of him. He was to go through there, and he was to do it of his own accord.

That was important. Somehow, in fact, it made all the difference. If he came willingly, it was his way of turning control over to his father, of surrendering his will. But to do that was to lose. Even if he fought, they would still subdue him and bring him to his father's feet-he knew that-but he would do it with his will unbent. And that was the difference.

Yet it wasn't so easy to keep his chin up. The same power that had been growing exponentially within him over the last few days had now become something like a magnet. It wanted to cling to what was in that circular chamber. Even the simple act of standing still required a tremendous effort on his part. He wanted to go inside. Every cell in his body begged him to go. Only his will fought back.

He reached into his pocket and he took out the Barber fifty cent piece. He turned it over in his hand and it winked at him in the low light. He caressed the edges of the coin with his thumb, feeling the deep gouge at the top that had been worn smooth by countless hours of slipping through his fingers.

It felt heavier than normal. He closed his fingers around it and tried to focus on everything that had happened to him. When he told Anderson that he felt like everything he thought he knew about himself had turned out to be a lie, he wasn't being completely truthful. Yes, his childhood was a lie. He had been oblivious to his mother's suffering. He had lived in the same house as her for twelve years and never understood what his father was doing to her, how he was bleeding her dry, body and soul. And when his father had returned, he had almost gone over to him. He had almost believed in his father's vision. He knew now that was a lie, too.

But the one thing that had not changed was Rachel. That love remained, and it was not a lie. That part of his life was clear to the bottom of the gla.s.s, and when he held that Barber in his hand, he could touch the truth of that love.

When he opened his eyes again, he found it easier to hold his ground. One of the dead men held a withered arm out towards the blackness of the tunnel like he was leading a tour through an old Roman ruin. This way to the other side, sir. Through here you'll see a lovely furnished colonnade that opens up to the public amphitheater. If you please, sir. Watch your step there...

Paul shook his head.

The dead man dropped his arm. Two others advanced on him.

Paul slid his collapsible baton from his belt and snapped it open. He stood with it c.o.c.ked back over his right shoulder, waiting for the lead dead man to walk into the sweet spot of his stroke.

”Come on,” Paul said. ”A little closer.”

When the first dead man came into range, Paul stroked him upside the head with a blow so forceful it broke the man's neck and left a grotesque indentation just above the man's left ear. Paul drew the baton back over his shoulder and backpedaled. The dead man continued to advance, his head bent over to one side at an unnatural angle. His hands came up towards Paul and the fingers flexed. Paul stepped forward again and swung his baton. This time it was like hitting a rotten pumpkin. The skull gave way beneath the blow with a splat. Paul rained blows down on it again and again, reducing the man's head in seconds to something that looked like a deflated balloon.

And still it came on.

Paul swept its legs out from under it, then turned and tried to climb up the railing behind him. The dead were on him in moments. He fought with his fists and his knees and his elbows, slinging bodies off the side of the platform and down into the tangled wreckage beneath him, but there were just too many of them. They pulled him down to the floor and they twisted his arms behind his back and he felt the bite of his own handcuffs as they clamped down on his wrists.

Chapter 25.

Rachel had crawled as far as she could go into a corner. Behind her, a pair of cement walls rose up twenty feet to the base of the smokestacks. The smokestacks towered up another hundred feet above the top of the walls. Gazing up at them made her dizzy. In front of her were huge piles of garbage laced through with skeins of heavy metal cables. Presumably, she was in some sort of abandoned factory, but what she was doing here, and what was to happen to her, she had no idea. The dead men who brought her here had evidently not wanted to kill her. They certainly could have if they'd wanted to. The way they'd punched into her apartment and pulled her from it like birds pulling a worm from the earth, she suspected they could have torn her to pieces.

Instead, they brought her here.

She really didn't even remember how she'd gotten here. One of them had slung her over his shoulder in a sort of fireman's carry and brought her into the backyard behind her apartment. They had stepped into thick vegetation that choked the alley beyond the fence. She'd felt weeds and branches tearing at her skin. And then they were through the vegetation and crawling over endless catwalks and piles of garbage. She had ended up here, tucked away in this corner.

Those things, those dead men, had been standing guard over her at first. But they were gone now. She was alone, scared and alone. There had been some strange noises, high, metallic popping noises that almost sounded like distant gunshots. After that, those dead men had scaled over the garbage and disappeared. They hadn't looked at each other. They hadn't spoken. They didn't seem to perk up like dogs to a whistle outside of the range of her hearing. They just climbed into the superstructure and vanished, like spiders into a sink full of dirty dishes.

They'd been gone for a while now. Slowly, almost as though she doubted that she could, she rose to her feet. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and started walking through the wreckage, trying to be quiet, listening for anything, always expecting another of those dead men to suddenly step around a corner in front of her and tear her apart, until at last she came to a place where the superstructure had collapsed. The tangled mess before her seemed to be the remains of a catwalk and its supports. There was no way around it, and she couldn't climb over it. It didn't look stable. And she certainly couldn't turn around and go back. Those dead men were back there.

Her only real choice was to try to go through it. She ducked down and found a small tunnel where a platform of some sort had collapsed over top of the catwalk itself. The metal lattice floor of the catwalk was tilted to one side, but if she held on to the railings and pulled herself along, she might be able to make it through. It looked like she'd have to crawl for about sixty feet, maybe less.

She grabbed the bottom rung of the railing and made her way into the tunnel with a hand over hand motion. Her toes provided a little grip on the lattice, but most of the weight was carried by the muscles in her arms, and after only a few feet of that, she was breathing hard and sweating. The metal bar became slippery in her hands, and though she was terrified, she knew she had to stop for just a second and catch her breath. She hooked one arm around a metal bar and stopped to rest. She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest against the metal lattice floor of the catwalk. When she opened her eyes again, she found herself staring through the metal lattice into another pair of open eyes.

She screamed.

”Be quiet! G.o.dd.a.m.n it, shut up! Rachel, stop it. They'll hear you.”

Hearing her own name seemed to calm her, and Anderson knew he'd guessed right. He made shus.h.i.+ng noises after that, keeping his voice as low and as gentle as the pain up and down his right side would allow.

He said, ”You're Rachel, right?”

”Yes,” she said, her voice breathy. Her eyes were wide open, a deep, rich brown with flecks of green. She had dirt all over her face, and her features were twisted by fear, but Anderson could see, even beneath the fear and the dirt, that she was pretty. A little skinny for his tastes, but definitely a knockout.

”Who are you?” she said.

”I'm Keith Anderson. I'm here with Paul. He sent me to get-”

”Where is he?” she said. ”Where's Paul? Is he okay?”

”I don't know,” Anderson said, and he had to stop there. Speaking had sent a fresh wave of pain through him, and he closed his eyes and groaned. When he opened his eyes again, he was panting. ”He wants to stop his father.”

”His father?”

Anderson nodded. Her expression told him enough. She knew what was going on, or at least some of it. Enough to be scared as h.e.l.l, anyway.

Slowly, he tried to move.

”He told me to find you and get you out of here.”

”We have to find Paul first,” she said.

”Rachel, those things...we can't fight them. I shot one of them in the head. We can't beat them.”

”Then we have to get Paul out of here.”

”He wasn't afraid of them, Rachel. I think he understands them.”

”I won't leave here without him.”

Anderson closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath. He couldn't see his right foot from where he was, but from the way the pain there was beginning to drown out everything else he knew that it was bad.

”Can you move?” she asked.