Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga (9 page)

“Where are we even going?” asked Ryan dejectedly. “They’re going to be pretty much anywhere, and we’ve got to sleep some time.”

Bones kept walking, panting lightly as he went, but he wasn’t tired. Well past the point of exhaustion, he probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep if he tried.

“Mom’s dead, Jilly’s dead,” Ryan said. “I’ll bet Grammy’s dead, too. Uncle Norman is probably dead. Aunt Ronelle. Albert. Maggie. Miss Glover is probably dead.”

Ryan scoffed at this, not altogether unhappy that his teacher might not have survived the apocalypse, but then his scowl returned.

“Mr. Harris is probably dead,” he continued, wallowing in his despair. “Ms. Heartfield. Mr. Birdwell. Miss Hogan. Pastor Coleman. Dr. Rayburn. Dr. Holly. I guess I won’t be getting braces now.”

The rifle bounced off the concrete again. Bones hopped a step to avoid it coming down on him.

“All the kids on my street. All the kids on my bus. All the kids in my class,” Ryan said as he kept walking, not noticing that Bones had stopped
dead
in his tracks. “All the kids at daycare, all the kids at the allergist’s office…”

Ryan finally looked over and saw that his four-legged companion was no longer at his side. “Bones?”

He turned around and saw Bones standing stock-still, staring straight ahead. With great trepidation, Ryan turned to look where Bones’s eyes were fixed, and soon understood why.

Standing at an intersection directly in front of them were a dozen flesh-eaters, but not massing in some mob or on the move. Instead, they were simply lined up shoulder to shoulder, similar to the family of flesh-eaters back in the house. Though fused at the shoulders, hips, hands, legs, thighs, calves and even feet, unlike the family, they weren’t trying to pull each other in different directions. No, what had been disorganized about earlier incarnations of this fused undead monstrosity seemed to have been worked out in this version, the difference between a helpless newborn baby and a three year-old toddler, able to communicate, move, eat, and in general function as an individual entity.

The creature stared at Ryan but with eighteen eyes instead of twenty-four, as three of the twelve bodies were without heads, though were still fused at the arms and legs. This meant nine mouths revealed their rows of teeth, many broken from hours gnashing through muscle into bone instead of a dozen. Eighteen ears heard it when Ryan gasped at the sight, and nine noses inhaled his scent of fear as twelve chests rose and fell in the exact same rhythm, the bodies breathing completely in unison.

Ryan knew when it stepped forward, it would do that as one, too. Probably when it ran as well. But this wasn’t foremost in his mind. Even though the father flesh-eater was part of a longer chain and had been up on its feet after receiving a poker to the head, Ryan figured that that was the anomaly. He still fervently believed the one thing for certain about the flesh-eaters that had murdered his entire family was that a head shot equated death. Bullet to the head,
bang
—you’re dead, like he’d had to do with Jesse. But now that comforting fail-safe was gone. The flesh-eaters had not only found a way around even this, but they seemed stronger for its execution. The living nightmare was only getting worse.

That’s when the mouths of the nine bodies with heads opened wide and roared at Ryan and Bones.

“RAAAAAAHHHHH!”

The noise was tremendous, like a phalanx of Ottoman Janissaries preparing to charge across an ancient battlefield with the sole intention of massacring their enemy to a man. Deep and guttural, the sound chilled Ryan to the bone, his eyes going wide with fear. Bones barked back and viciously bared his teeth as the free arms of the line of flesh-eaters began to gesticulate wildly, also in unison, readying their attack. The bodies hunched down, like a row of sprinters on their starting blocks, all eyes on Ryan and Bones.

“Shit-shit-shit-
shit
,” inhaled Ryan as he quickly raised his rifle.

Before he could aim, the creature launched itself forward, its legs moving together like some kind of great, side-turned centipede. Startled, Ryan pulled the trigger, and his first shot went completely wide, the bullet whizzing skyward well over the head of the left-most flesh-eater on line. He went to re-load, but unlike the other flesh-eaters, this monstrosity had the ability to use its multiple legs to really
run
and was quickly cutting the distance between itself and its would-be meal.

“
Bones…?!
” Ryan cried urgently, as if seeking permission to flee. He didn’t have to wait long for Bones’s reply.

Without so much as a woof, Bones suddenly broke to the left and Ryan followed, the creature changing its course to pursue them both. Ryan saw a narrow path between the back fences of two houses.

“Through there!” he yelled to the dog. “Over there!”

With Bones at his heels as they entered the alley, Ryan looked back, hoping to see that the flesh-eaters wouldn’t be able to follow. But then he watched as the undulating creature rolled the segmented bodies that made up its form together into a more aquiline, insect-like version of itself and used its limbs to not just run across the alley floor but also to accelerate by galloping its hands across the fences on either side, pushing itself ever faster. Like a tunneling mole, the creature didn’t seem particularly bound to directions up or down and was much quicker when pushing itself off against three surfaces than just one.

Though he was just behind Ryan, Bones hadn’t been running at full-speed, just fast enough to keep up with the boy or maybe a little faster to speed up his pace. But as the dog glanced back, his nose filled with the peculiarly dank smell of this new creature, a scent that differentiated itself from simply that of a cadaver but was an entirely new animal with its own, now-living smells.

Ryan looked back again as well, seeing that the creature was gaining on them. He turned and saw that the end of the alley was still about two house-lengths ahead. So panicked was Ryan, that he didn’t see the couple of upside-down paint cans directly ahead in his path.

“
Oof!
” cried Ryan as his right foot kicked into the cans, sending him sprawling forward, and landing with a
splat
against the grass. Behind him, the creature immediately arched itself up, its various arms and legs allowing it to straddle both fences and rise above the prone boy like a cobra readying to strike.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” spat Ryan as he looked up at the creature, the first two flesh-eaters in the segmented chain being raised in the air, their bodies—arms and legs positioned around like mandibles—freed from the fences in order to be brought down like the jaws of a mantis.

But at the last second, Bones grabbed at Ryan’s shoulder, yanking him towards a nearby open gate. The creature drove its front flesh-eaters forward, a couple more segments along with it making four bodies swooping down together, and smashed itself into the ground where Ryan had just been, the arms and legs of the flesh-eaters churning at the dirt and grass on the floor of the alley in a motion that suggested they would have easily torn Ryan to pieces given the chance. When they spotted his escape, however, the flesh-eaters all hissed in unison at the retreating boy and dog as they clambered through the gate into the backyard of the neighboring house.

“Thanks, Bones!” Ryan cried breathlessly.

The backyard had a pool, and as Ryan got to his feet on the other side of the fence, he momentarily considered jumping in, wondering if this new, efficient construct of flesh-eaters could swim. But Bones had already circled back around to the gate, barking his head off as the creature raised itself over the top of the fence, gazing into the backyard of their escape. As soon as its many eyes fixed on Bones and Ryan, its many arms and legs grasped the fence, and it swarmed itself over like a platoon of fire ants chained together at the waist.

Ryan abandoned his plan to jump in the pool and simply bolted for the back door of the house as Bones followed. He turned the knob but found it locked.

“
Shit!
” he cursed, looking around for other options.

Seeing that the gate extended around the side of the house, Ryan followed a brick pathway to the corner of the home and saw that the fence went the length of the house and ended with a gate that presumably opened up into the front yard. Glancing back to where the segmented creature was now slithering across the ground around the edge of the pool, Ryan figured it was his only chance.

“Come on, Bones!” he cried as the dog did double duty following him but also hurling warning barks back at the oncoming monster. Hearing his name, Bones turned and chased after Ryan, following him down the side of the house with the creature hot on their heels.

It took Ryan maybe thirteen steps to reach the gate, only to find that locked as well. He shrieked in rage, shaking the gate with all his might. But then, grabbing onto its wood frame, he realized there were just enough toe—and hand-holds to pull him over.

He was halfway up the fence when he looked back and saw Bones, who was trying to follow him but clearly couldn’t get over the fence in his wounded state. Just behind the dog, the flesh-eaters were skittering crab-style after him, their mouths open and drooling.

Ryan made a decision and climbed off the fence, getting back down to the ground alongside Bones as the shepherd, realizing he wasn’t going to be able to climb the fence, turned and began frantically barking at the creature.

“I won’t leave you, Bones,” Ryan said quietly as he knelt down next to the dog and put his hand reassuringly on the fur between Bones’s shoulder blades.

As Bones’s barks became higher-pitched and more obviously filled with fear, Ryan looked up at the creature as it did another of its cobra-moves, arcing high above the two of them with teeth bared and pseudo-mandibles flared like an owl about to swoop down on a cornered mouse.

Suddenly, a tremendous noise filled the air and the creature exploded in a flurry of sparks, flesh, bone, and black, bilious blood. Ryan covered his ears as grue splattered against his back and legs.

The tone in Bones’s bark changed immediately as if he himself had called in the mysterious air strike. He seemed to be happy, working his jaws as if looking for a way to join the fight but seemingly realizing it was best to stay on the sidelines.

Just as suddenly as it had started, the violent racket came to a halt—at least, some of it did. What turned out to be a barrage of machine gun fire was replaced by the steady
whup…whup…whup…whup…
of an Apache attack helicopter that was hovering just over the front yard of the neighboring house. Ryan stared at it in awe, his jaw almost down to his chest.

“Holy crap, Bones. Are you seeing that, too?”

But Bones just kept barking, even as heavily armored Army Rangers bashed through the gate and hands reached in to extract the pair.

I
t took some convincing of the Special Forces response team, specifically a Captain Willingham, for Bones not to be left behind to fend for himself in Gainey or, worse, shot. But after Ryan showed them Bones’s collar and explained that he was a trained Pittsburgh police K-9 who now had more experience sniffing out and fighting against the flesh-eaters than any dogs they might have brought with them, the captain realized how valuable such an asset might be.

“All right, kid,” Captain Willingham had said. “We’ll treat you like a matched set.”

After a visit to the company medic, who patched them up as best he could in the field, Bones and Ryan were loaded onto an Army CH-47 transport helicopter and whisked out of the combat zone. As soon as the helicopter was aloft, Bones fell asleep. He may have still been hungry but only accepted a quick drink from a soldier’s canteen before closing his eyes.

The longer they’d stayed on the ground, though, the more antsy Ryan had become. His debriefing by the captain, who wanted to know in detail where he’d been and what he’d experienced, had repeatedly been punctuated by machine gun fire from both the Apache’s forward cannon as well as troops on the ground exterminating flesh-eaters both near and far. So, when the helicopter was finally airborne and putting serious miles between himself and Bones and the scene of so much death that morning, Ryan was finally able to relax. His first reaction had been to break down and cry, but he was too dehydrated, and no tears came. Instead, his body merely shivered with sobs as he tried to hide this from the soldiers in the chopper.

“We didn’t know how wide it had spread until we started rising above the action,” a Sergeant Lopez told Ryan, handing him a pair of headphones, figuring conversation might help the troubled kid. “It seems to have started around Duncan but quickly spread to Gainey, past Scottsburg, and into Hammond, Warsaw, and Belton. They’d turned the city into Fortress Pittsburgh, thinking that was the next place they’d go but then
nada
. They’d all changed direction and started heading back out to the north.”

Though he had winced at the mention of his town, “Duncan,” Ryan liked that the man didn’t talk down to him, and when he said as much, Lopez smiled.

“Judging from what you told the captain, you’ve had a lot more experience fighting these things than anybody else in my unit. You and your pal there have earned the respect of a lot of American servicemen today.”

Ryan liked how that sounded. He glanced over at Bones, who was tethered to one of the seats of the helicopter by a nylon web belt one of the soldiers had attached to his collar. The shepherd looked dead to the world splayed out on the floor of the helicopter, despite the thunderous noise of the blades overhead.

“What were those things that attacked us?” Ryan asked Sergeant Lopez. Sgt. Lopez sighed, as if Ryan was bringing up the one sore subject on the day.

“That’s just it. We have no idea,” he replied. “We’re calling them ‘Stage 3s’ or ‘MBNS,’ Multi-Body Non-Sentients, which is one of the most laughable bits of bureaucratic-speak I’ve heard. We just call them Multipedes, just, well…because. Whatever the virus or parasite or whatever it is that’s been infecting people has been mutating throughout the day, causing their hosts to mutate as well. Tissue samples they took off the first Stage 2 bodies that came in are night-and-day different from ones they took off Stage 2s that came in as little as an hour later. What they’re really afraid is, well, these multipedes might not be the end of it. No one knows what they’re looking for out there.”