Transformation (12 page)

10.

Cooper was paralyzed with fear and devastation. He was certain he was going to die a most horrible and painful death just as his sister apparently had but he didn’t care as much as he would have otherwise. He held his hands over his head and sobbed, tensing his body involuntarily as he waited for that first hand to yank on him, that first mouth full of cracked teeth to clamp down on a tender part of his body and start tearing away his flesh. But what hurt the most was his heart. He’d gone through so much to find his sister that to lose her now was unbearable.

He lay face down on the rough tarmac for a few very long seconds waiting for his end. Nothing happened.

Cooper opened his eyes and looked side to side, still not daring to move. A forest of dead feet shuffled around him. Some with shoes, most bare, the feet were just shuffling back and forth and going nowhere in particular. He looked up and saw the legs, saggy grey flesh mottled black, cuts and gouges, broken bones, hanging innards, and a few scraps of cloth.

The smell, as usual, was horrible. Lying on the ground in the middle of a horde of the dead was a lot worse than just being downwind of them. He never got used to the smell, but he didn’t gag so much anymore. He wasn’t sure what to do; lay here until they notice him? Try to escape and alert them? He was about to start belly crawling when he heard his sister’s voice. He couldn’t believe it. How was it possible?

“Cooper! Cooper! Stand and run towards me. Hurry!”

Cooper placed his hands flat on the concrete with the intention of standing, but some survival instinct wouldn’t let him. He had to force himself through a thick veil of fear to bring his feet under himself and stand. He slowly rose until he was in a crouch, afraid to pop up in to the line of sights of a corpse. He was still hesitant and moving slowly.

“Cooper! Run now, hurry!”

At the insistence of his big sister, Cooper straightened and tried hard not to touch any part of a corpse.

He found himself eye to eye with a snarling zombie. The dead face was almost bare of flesh on the bottom half of it. The exposed teeth crashed together as it bit the air in frustration. It moved its head about queerly as it attempted to find freedom. Every few motions, it tried to lunge forward and when it did the only thing that found motion was the head. It whipped forward and each time Cooper almost fell backwards.

The desire to run, to duck, to smash its head in was almost more than he could handle. As he was about to lash out at it, it stopped fighting and stood still. Its jaws slowly opened and closed as it watched Cooper with milky eyes.

Being mere inches from the face of a corpse, with a few moments to observe it, wasn’t something he’d ever been able to do—nor something he ever wanted to do. But as he looked briefly at the grey face and then away, something caught his eye. But he looked away and saw his sister ahead of him standing on top of something.

He looked back before moving forward and realized what caught his eye. The dead thing, the grey rotting corpse, had wet eyes. They were glistening in the sun and Cooper was sure their eyes weren’t so wet or healthy looking, for lack of a better word. And he noticed something else. The irises were patterned geometrically. Unlike the human iris these dead creatures didn’t have a flowery looking iris, they had what could only be described as plates that moved in and out individually. As the sun hit its face the iris plates on the sun side moved out and even caused the surface of the eye to bulge out a little. They appeared to be changing shape as they attempted to correct for the new bright light source.

Cooper was transfixed and if not for Ellen yelling at him, he might have tarried longer. He stepped passed the corpse and moved amongst the crowd, side by side with the dead. He saw his sister on top of some small building at the end of the parking lot by the main street and headed towards her. As he progressed through the crowd, for there was no path between them, he had to turn sideways and work his way through as he would if he were pushing through a crowd of the living. He was terrified, horribly disgusted, and focused on getting the hell out of the mysteriously frozen mass of corpses. Part of him couldn’t help but humorously observe that the dead were far more polite then the living as they stepped aside for him when nudged. He found himself muttering
excuse me
a time or two out of habit. None of them gave him a dirty look, or refused to move, but they did want to eat him so all things being equal . . .

As he drew closer to his sister, he could see that she was standing on a small flimsy metal shed. It was for Goodwill donations and sat at the edge of the parking lot. It was a safe height off the ground and that’s all that concerned him for now, but he was already thinking ahead.
Then what do we do?

He reached up and pulled himself to the roof of the shed and rolled onto his back. The second his foot cleared the roof’s edge there was a roar as the zombies instantly resumed their moaning and hissing. It was a stark contrast to the silence preceding. The small shed shook under the simultaneous assault of the mob and the metal walls crashed and boomed.

“Crap that was scary.” He stayed on his back then sat up quickly. “What happened? How did you get up here? I mean I thought . . . “

“Several zombies carried me. After I was up here, they all froze. It had to be Trevor.”

That was strange enough and Cooper was overjoyed his sister was alive, but he was still primarily concerned with their predicament. He kept asking himself.

What do we do now?

“Look!” Ellen slapped him on top of the head just like when they were kids. It still pissed him off. He stood up to look at what she was pointing at and when he did, the zombies responded with a forward surge. He heard a loud popping as the shed walls bent inward. The roof popped up and Cooper almost lost his footing. He and Ellen had to compensate for the bucking of the roof as they stood.

The little building was nothing more than a flimsy tin storage shed like the ones on display in front of hardware stores. It buckled under his weight, and he felt the roof drop a little, enough to throw him off balance. He steadied himself, but the roof jumped again as the zombies below pressed on the sides of the building.

Cooper felt his bowels loosen, a terrible sensation he’d never actually felt before. People throw the expression around in casual conversation “I almost shit myself” but to have it actually happen is a far cry from anything he’d ever experienced. He was able to keep his pants clean in the back, but he’d wet himself a little. He didn’t have time to be embarrassed or even register the event as the roof pitched again wildly as the dead continued to surge forward. Thousands of them, all pushing towards the little shed at once, was what likely slowed them down. They were in a massive disorganized circle surrounding the shed and they were wedging themselves in tighter and tighter as they got closer to their goal. Cooper knew they wouldn’t last much longer on top of the little structure.

He felt a deep stab on the back of his arm. Ellen had pinched him, and it hurt like shit as it always had. It made him jump and he almost lost his balance. He finally was able to see what it was that she had been pointing to. Cooper looked out at the sea of corpses and saw nothing, at first. But one face caught his eye because it wasn’t moving. Trevor stood perfectly still and untouched by the dead a few yards away. It was an odd sight, but Cooper couldn’t find any hope in it.

Suddenly Trevor turned and started to walk slowly away from them through the crowd of corpses. Cooper and Ellen watched him, feeling the flimsy shed bending down beneath them, wondering if he were leaving them for good.

The roof suddenly dropped about a foot and Ellen screamed. Cooper dropped reflexively to his hands to disperse his weight. The dead were reaching over the edge of the roof, pushing against the walls, and bending them in bit by bit. A hand grazed Cooper’s foot. He pulled it away. Ellen was pressed against his side and watching the cold dead hands reaching for her, slapping and pounding on the shed. She was beyond panic and could do nothing but hold on as long as she could, wondering how long that might be.

Cooper swore as his foot suddenly plunged downward between two roof panels. The rivets holding them together had torn through the flimsy panels leaving long, razor sharp edges. The shed was made of metal seemingly not much more substantial than an aluminum can and tore just as easily when stressed. The dead were not yet inside the little shed but the walls were giving way to their assault. Ellen pulled at his shoulder in a futile attempt to help him stand, but that only hastened the collapse of the roof. Both crashed through and landed on trash bags stuffed with clothing.

Inside the shed was hellish. The booming and banging of the metal walls was deafening. The light jumped erratically as the panels were assaulted from the outside. Arms poked through the gaps and reached and grasped. Faces were beginning to peek through. The gaps were widening and the booming was being replaced by the squeak of stressed metal and popping rivets as the dead strained towards their next feast. The light stopped jumping and pulsing and began to grow dimmer and dimmer as the dead blocked up every hole available.

Very quickly they found themselves in a dimly lit room composed of skeletal arms sheathed in decomposing flesh that reached and grasped, sometimes brushing their targets. In the shadows of the arms were hungry faces slicing and shredding themselves on razor sharp metal edges as they strained inward. And almost worst of all, was the sound of hissing, moaning, and the horrible clacking of their teeth.

With a loud pop, a hand grabbed Cooper’s arm. He didn’t have room to move away from it. He let it hold onto him and leaned away as it tried to pull him towards the wall.

“Cooper! Do something,” Ellen’s voice a shrill and desperate plea. She had a dead hand clamped onto her shin. Two zombies had managed to drag themselves halfway into the shed. They were pinned by the crowd behind and on top of them, but others were making progress too. It wouldn’t be long until the first mouth was close enough to take a bite.

Cooper didn’t answer. He felt like a five year old once again. He was hoping, at the very same moment she was speaking, that his big sister would make everything OK. For most of their lives, she was the bigger kid by at least a foot. She was the boss, the protector, the problem solver—and often the tormentor. It wasn’t until the last few years, as Cooper rapidly grew taller and stronger, that he realized how petite his sister actually was.

He felt in a dream state as he put his hand on one of his guns. He would have to wait until it was absolutely the only option before he acted. He looked at his older sister next to him, realized they were holding hands, and choked up. He remembered the very first day of Kindergarten when she walked him to his classroom. He was scared then too and she held his hand and told him everything would be all right. He knew he would have to put a bullet in her head first and began to sob. No matter how humane the reason, he doubted he could do it. He hugged his big sister, resting his chin on the top of her head and raised his pistol.

He watched the zombie clutching him pull itself into the shed a foot more. He heard Ellen scream and felt her nails dig into him as she held on.

“Cooper, do something!”

He raised his gun and pressed it to the forehead of the zombie on her and pulled the trigger. It stopped fighting and became a plug for the hole it had just opened. But the walls were quickly failing, getting pushed open as more arms and heads got through. Cooper fired several more shots, dropping a few more corpses, knowing it was all but over.

Trevor made his way across the lot to the nearest car. He realized quickly that as soon as he stopped trying to control the others, they ignored him. He was just starting to understand how to
think
to stay in harmony with the others. It was an odd new way of thinking for him, a sort of knowing rather than willful demanding. He placed his hands on the car before him and felt tendrils of consciousness flowing along the paint that was both smooth and rough to him. He felt the tendrils passing through the foam gasket between door and frame. He wasn’t sure what he was doing on a conscious level other than holding the thought in his mind, in exclusion to all other thoughts,
this car is part of us, this car is part of us.

The tendrils flowed in and around and through until at some point, they were no more. Now the car was part of the whole. It was a separate object but Trevor now had an intimate and thorough awareness of it as if it were an appendage. But he still had no idea what to do. His human brain was connected but clueless. He had the most rudimentary control over this new state of existence. He went through a few lines of thought that felt dead or flat in his mind—
open the door, unlock, let me in
—when he stumbled across a visual thought that sent a small shockwave through his body. He could feel the car responding. He heard the click-clunk of the electric door locks opening. He opened his eyes as he opened the car door.

Once inside, he repeated the process, a little bit faster this time and was able to start the car. When he opened his eyes, he noticed the keys were already in the ignition. He smirked at himself. It would have been a lot faster had he checked that first.

“Do you hear that?” Ellen looked up at Cooper with a smile. “It’s a car.”