Mutated - 04 (34 page)

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Authors: Joe McKinney

BOOK: Mutated - 04
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C
HAPTER
30
Shivering all over, Sylvia touched the searing wound where her ear had been. It was hot to the touch and sticky. Her hand came away bloody. She didn’t believe that she was going to die like this. She didn’t
want
to believe it. Not after all these years, and all that she’d been through. But here it was, her life dripping from her fingertips, turning pink in the rain and fading away to nothing as it splashed to the floor.
She looked over at Avery. Sylvia had hoped to find some strength there, some hope, some desperate child need for her mother, but the girl looked beaten and resigned, dark circles of exhaustion under her eyes. And somehow, that look of defeat on Avery’s face was harder to bear than the wound itself.
To the Red Man she said, “You had no right to do this. I don’t want this. I don’t want it.”
She expected to be ignored; or, if he paid her any mind at all, to be backhanded across the cheek for her insolence. Either of those actions she was prepared for. But she wasn’t prepared for him to kneel next to her and speak so kindly, so gently.
“But it will happen. Whether you want it or not, the course is set. There is no free will, no decisions, no choices.”
She sniffled.
His face was next to hers, his breath on her cheek. She wouldn’t look at him, though. She couldn’t.
“You’ve been through this before,” she said. “You know how bad I hurt. Why would you do this to me, knowing that?”
“It does hurt. I remember. You feel like your lungs are filling up with blood. It’s hard to focus. Your mind is racing with all the things you wished you’d done. The regrets are piling up in your mind like unpaid bills.”
“Yes.”
“All of that goes away,” he said. “You hate me right now because you don’t understand. But I’ve set you free. Here in just a moment there will be no guilt, no shame, no regrets. Nothing bad lives here. You are about to be reborn, and when you come out on the other side, I’ll be waiting for you. And I won’t be a monster then. I’ll be your god. I’ll be the voice that tells you where to walk, when to eat. For the first time in your life, you will rest easy. I guarantee it. You haven’t felt this way since you were a baby.”
“But my mind will be gone. All that I am will go away.”
“Evolution is painful, and it doesn’t always take us in the direction we want to go. Don’t you see? That’s what’s happening here. This is evolution. What you’re feeling, this is the future of humanity. This is more than what you’re feeling. This is more than you changing. The world is changing. And those who don’t change with it will become casualties of it.”
Her eyes kept wanting to roll back into her head. She was sweating, but the rain was cold on her skin. Her mind was drifting, unable to lock onto a clear sense of where she was or what she was feeling or what she should do. There was a lump in her throat but she couldn’t swallow it. Her heart was pounding furiously, but no matter how hard she tried to fight it she couldn’t stop her mind from floating away. Thinking used to be so easy, she told herself, such a necessary part of who she was. But now it seemed unimportant, like a daydream.
“This is a good thing,” he said.
No
, her mind screamed.
Fight, damn it!
She reached down to his crotch and squeezed his balls as hard as she could. Zombies felt no pain because they lacked a sense of self, but she figured he’d be different. His howling in pain was enough to convince her she was right as she tried to roll over onto her hands and knees.
Why was it so difficult? she thought, willing herself to do it. Something so easy.
She heard him raging behind her. Her body rebelled against the sudden exertion and she began to cough and hack, but she no longer felt like she was drifting. She felt solid, like she had purpose.
His hands were pawing at her back, but that was okay. Lead him away from Avery, she thought. Give her the opportunity to escape.
She didn’t make it far.
The Red Man was on her like a cat on a bug. He grabbed her shirt, her hair, her shoulders. He threw her back onto the platform and she landed in a heap against the metal railing.
The Red Man was standing over her, breathing hard, but the significance of it didn’t make sense.
At least at first.
His gentle demeanor was gone. His eyes were bloodshot again, and he was looking at her like she was food.
“No,” he said, and shook his head violently from side to side. “No.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, what he was objecting to, until the sense of calm overtook her once again. And that’s what it was too, a sense of calm. She had feared it earlier, but now she was better. Suddenly the calm seemed welcoming, not something to be feared.
No, she thought. No, something’s wrong.
But it was the kind of wrong that she couldn’t put her finger on. Every part of her was screaming that something was seriously
off
, but her mind wouldn’t be bothered by it. All she wanted to do was drift away, like she did when she heard some old song she’d loved so long ago.
And that’s what it is, she realized. It wasn’t fear; it was movement. Her mind was drifting into forever, while her body waited patiently somewhere far behind. A comforting stillness fell over her, and the urge to let go became overpowering. There was no need to be afraid. All this was going to be okay. Avery would be okay. Even Niki, so angry and so violent all the time, would be okay.
All she had to do was let go.
For a moment, she fought it. She rallied. She willed the fog from her mind. But there was never really any chance of clearing her brain. She was slipping beneath the waves, and it only hurt when she fought.
Stop fighting. Make the pain go away.
Stop. . .
For a moment, there was nothing. Not even any pain. There was only a need to stand and wait.
The Red Man would move her when he wished.
 
 
There were mangled faces huddled above him. Hands reached down. They scratched and tore at Nate’s face and what remained of his clothes. He twisted left then right in the mud and swatted at their hands, kicked them when he could. And then, between their legs, he saw a flash of daylight.
It had been like this once before, years ago, when he was still running track in high school. He’d been racing a senior from the nearby town of Gatlin on a cross-country course through the forest out behind the high school. They rounded the last bend, neck and neck, the opening out of the forest just two hundred yards ahead. Nate saw the patch of daylight at the edge of the trees and a thrill went through him. He’d heard the note of exhaustion in the other boy’s breathing, but Nate knew he had more. He had this. Run to daylight, he’d told himself. Run into the daylight.
Now, with a mountain of sin and shame behind him, he was seeing that daylight again.
Run, he told himself. Run into the daylight.
He flipped over onto his hands and knees and scrambled through mud, clawing his way through the forest of legs, until he came up on the other side. Nate was covered head to foot in brown mud. He stood on shaky legs and pivoted in a circle until he found the Red Man’s platform again.
A man with long wild hair lunged at him. Nate stepped to one side and pushed him down into the mud.
Nate’s hand slid across his waist and touched the blackjack’s hilt. He had forgotten about it again. Another zombie, this one a woman with deep black gashes down her cheeks, like deep fingernail scratches, tried to take a bite out of him.
Nate swung the blackjack, intending to catch her right above the ear, but caught her in the mouth instead. Her teeth shattered with a nasty crunch he could hear even over the collective moaning of the crowd and she staggered back. Nate advanced on her again and this time got her right above the ear, dropping her to the mud.
They were all around him, a blur of faces.
Nate didn’t stop moving. He knew stopping would get him killed and he had no intention of dying just yet. He twisted away from another zombie, put his hand in a woman’s face to block her snapping teeth from his neck, and pushed on.
One of them got its fingers caught up in the tattered clothes hanging around Nate’s waist and he had to spin around in circles to try to throw the zombie off balance. “Let go,” he said, and slapped at the zombie’s arm with his weapon. But the zombie’s grip was strong and when Nate finally shook it loose it came away with a muddy clump of his shirt in its fingers.
“Fucking bastard,” Nate screamed, and swung his blackjack overhand, coming down on the zombie’s head. It hit with a crack as the scalp split in two and fell away from the skull.
At the same time, more hands were reaching for him. Nate hit one of his attackers in the face with the club. It was an awkward swing, and he lost his footing in the slick mud. He landed on his side and felt the air rush out of lungs.
He gasped for breath, and was still fighting to pull air into his lungs as he scrambled away on his hands and knees. A moment later he was on his feet again. There was a gap between the two zombies directly in front of him and he ran for it. They clawed at his face but he didn’t let them slow him down. The Red Man’s platform was less than a hundred feet away now. He was close.
A man tried to wrap his arms around Nate’s neck, but he ducked and twisted around, coming under the tackle. Nate swatted the man in the groin with the blackjack and almost laughed at the grunt that came from him. The zombie pitched over forward, but didn’t stop. He kept kicking its knees at the earth, swaying from the blow, trying to climb back to his feet.
But if he ever made it, Nate didn’t know and didn’t care. He was already pushing his way toward the platform again, pushing bodies aside, swimming over those he couldn’t move and crawling like a worm under them.
Then—there was daylight again!
He was through the crowd and standing at the foot of the metal stairs that led up the front of the platform.
Nate stumbled up the first few steps and stopped.
He looked back.
The zombie crowd was a riot slowly pushing itself toward his position.
He stood there, his chest heaving, watching them surge forward, not quite believing that he’d come this far. It didn’t seem possible, even though his body was screaming from a thousand cuts and bites and scratches.
“Nate!”
He looked up. That was Avery’s voice! He turned away from the crowd and started up, crashing into the railing like a pinball as he tried to clear his head. The zombies hadn’t killed him, but they had torn into him, and his mind felt like a soupy mess from the pain.
He was still four or five steps from the platform when he saw the Red Man staring down at him, his bloodshot eyes seeming to blend in with the paint on his skin. But Nate could still recognize the look of shock on the Red Man’s face. The Red Man looked at the stub of his finger and then at Nate.
“You,” he said. “That’s not possible.”
“I guess this ain’t your day,” Nate said, and raised his blackjack.
He was about to swing when a woman stepped in front of the Red Man and fell forward into Nate’s arms. Nate stumbled backward a few steps while struggling to keep the zombie at arm’s length. Only then did he recognize Sylvia. The side of her face was a mixture of fresh and dried blood, the frizzled gray hair there matted and sticky. Her mouth curled down at one side where the lip was busted. Her teeth were red with blood.
“Sylvia,” Nate said. “No.”
She snarled and lunged for him, teeth snapping. He was caught off guard, and she nearly got his upper lip. But Nate recovered in time to throw her to one side. She staggered, caught herself on the railing. Nate punched her in the nose with his free hand and knocked her off balance enough for him to get his foot up to her chest and kick.
She tumbled down the stairs and into the arms of the zombies coming up from the field.
Nate headed back up the stairs, the blackjack raised high.
He swung with everything he had, but the Red Man had the advantage of height and he blocked it by throwing his left forearm across Nate’s wrist.
Nate teetered on the stairs, off balance.
The Red Man lowered his arm and then hit Nate in the mouth with a fierce left jab. Nate’s vision turned purple for a second and he felt his legs turn to water. He couldn’t remember ever being hit so hard, and as he started to fall backward he pleaded with himself to keep his feet, keep his feet.
But it was no use.
His body wouldn’t cooperate, and he fell over.
A pair of arms fell on his shoulder and Nate blinked up at the torn and bleeding man who held him fast.
“Ben!” Nate said. “Oh Ben.”
But this wasn’t Ben anymore. The body was the same, but the eyes were vacant and dead. His face was a crisscross pattern of dried cuts and there were deep bite marks all over his arms and legs.

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