Echoes of Darkness Read online

  The only sign of man they saw in those four days, other than the roads, was a single car sitting alone in the middle of an eight-lane highway. The old man said he’d seen it before, but allowed the boy to make his own quick search while he swallowed a pill or two. The search turned up a Colorado Rockies cap the boy showed off triumphantly before putting it on to hopefully ameliorate the truly epic sunburn he was developing.

  The house came into view in the middle of the sixth day.

  They had passed another house on the fifth day, but it had been a blackened, burned-out shell. The boy had wondered about it aloud, but the old man refused to say a word. There was an extra tightness about his eyes and mouth, however, suggesting there was a story there he wasn’t telling.

  The house on the sixth day, though, was a house. White-painted walls pushing a whole-looking roof toward the unending sky; a dirt road running past the front door. They took turns gazing through the sight on the old man’s rifle when the structure was more than a mile away.

  “That’s great!” said the boy, after one long look. “Let’s go!”

  He handed back the rifle as he started forward, but the old man reached past the gun to grip his forearm.

  “Hold up. Ain’t that easy.”

  He tore up a fistful of grass, letting the dry blades trickle from his fingers, watching them drift on the breeze. Without a word he set off on a diagonal to the house. The boy followed, mystified. The old man did the trick with the grass twice more, keeping an eye on the house as he moved in a wide arc. They crept along, staying low, until the house was barely a half mile away. Then the old man leaned right in to the boy’s ear.

  “I went through there ’bout a month ago, and t’wern’t nobody there.”

  The raspy whisper was barely audible, despite his terrible breath tickling the boy’s skin.

  “Place was clean as a whistle. Looked like the folks might’a packed up and gotten out when things started to go bad, right after the rising. Probably went to the city, poor bastards. Point is, place was empty thirty days or so ago.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “So?”

  “Sniff. Sniff deep.”

  The boy inhaled through his nose, pulling the air down into his lungs. For the most part everything was clean and crisp. The wind gusted however, a slight breeze blowing toward them from the house, and the clean air was suddenly tinged with something that made the boy wince, flashes of a barrel and his parents’ screams running through his mind.

  Rot.

  Decomposition.

  Them.

  “Last month, that place was clean. Now there’s something dead in there. It may be lying-down-forever dead, but we don’t know. You go running in there, all excited to sleep in a real bed or sit in a chair or something, and there’s the wrong kind of dead in there, you just might be joining ’em. This ain’t the world I was born into, boy. You neither. In this world you don’t go running into any unknown situation. Not unless you’re bound and determined to give up that whole living and breathing part of walking around. Y’unnerstand?”

  The boy nodded, gulping, hot saliva filling his mouth at the thought of what he might have just walked into.

  “We go about this careful-like. On guard, so to speak. And the good thing is, if there are zombies in there, the breeze carries our noise away from them just as hard as it blows their stink toward us.”

  He slipped the boy’s revolver from its holster, quietly loading it with cartridges. He handed it back, gestured for it to be re-holstered, then handed over his machete.

  “Only use the gun if you have to. Too much noise and not enough bullets.”

  Later on the boy was fuzzy on the details of the attack. He remembered the stink of the place, the fetid taste of rot hanging in the air. He remembered the blank eyes and shuffling gaits. The reaching hands. He clearly recalled hearing his parents, screaming amidst the shuffling feet and chattering teeth as more of the terrible, shambling people stumbled out of the house into the yard. His parents screamed from somewhere for him to run away. Or maybe to come to them. Or maybe find a barrel and hide in a small dark place and he’d be okay.

  He remembered that: standing frozen with indecision, trying to decipher his parents’ wishes, their advice, telling him what to do to make things all right. All he had to do was figure out what his parents were telling him, and everything would be all right.

  He remembered that.

  He remembered, too, another face, different from the others, with their blank, staring eyes, if they even had eyes. This face held sharp eyes. Eyes that darted about. Eyes that saw. And the face itself wasn’t a blank, expressionless mask with a yawning, tooth-filled hole in the middle like the others. No, this face was filled with emotion, with anger, and the mouth opened and closed in a torrent of sound the boy vaguely recognized as words, though he had no time to hear them, so busy was he with puzzling out what Mom and Dad were trying to tell him as the grasping hands drew near.

  A blade swung. A head rolled. Blood and other stuff, some black, some yellow, oozed from the neck-stump as the body dropped. The angry figure flitted through the slower-moving crowd like quicksilver, still spouting angry words, and where he went things fell. Arms. Legs. Heads. Bodies. Things the boy recognized, though he could not think of the names of them. Inside things, long and ropy. The angry man hurt the people, killed the people, and the boy began to cry.

  The stink of the house grew as the people fell. Stronger. Thicker. He felt the smell on his skin, like he was moving through thick fog as he finally fell forward. He dropped into the darkness that swam up and around from all sides, closing him in like the curved slats of the barrel. He fell into the safety of the darkness and knew no more.

  A stinging slap from a hard, calloused hand.

  The boy opened his eyes.

  Another slap.

  He tasted blood.

  Another.

  Words, filled with spitting rage. “Useless.” “Let you die.” “Find a goddamned use for you.”

  The slapping hand again.

  And again.

  The boy felt dry ground against his cheek and realized he’d fallen. Had he been upright? He closed his eyes and took refuge in the darkness once more.

  The old man walked, and the boy stumbled to keep up. He wasn’t sure when they’d begun, wasn’t even sure if it was the same day, though he felt the blood crusting his swollen lip and thought not. He’d woken not lying on his bedroll, or even lying down at all, but opened his eyes to find himself shambling along almost like one of them, only keeping the old man’s back in sight because of the rope the old man held, the other end tied about the boy’s neck like a dog collar.

  Was I sleepwalking? he wondered. In shock?

  These questions passed through his mind lethargically, almost at a distance. He remembered the house, but vaguely. He remembered the beating afterward, vicious slaps from a hard hand, but it was as if he’d simply watched it happen to someone else, though his aches and pains and fattened lip assured him he’d been no bystander.

  “You back with us?”

  He’d been recalling the quick, brutal way the old man had passed through the small zombie horde at the house, when the low voice grabbed his attention. The straight back and western hat he’d been following had stopped, so he had stopped too, drawing up behind the old man, though something made him stay out of arm’s reach.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good,” the old man said without turning. “Been a whole day since the house, and you ain’t been worth a tiny shit since then.”

  A day?

  The boy understood, somewhere, that being unconscious for so long wasn’t good, but the knowledge didn’t worry him; it was simply something learned by rote that popped into his head.

  “I . . . I’m sorry about the house,” he said, dully. “I just . . . my parents—”

  “I know,” the old man interrupted. “You told me. More’n once. Had trouble gettin’ you to shut up about it, in fact.” />
  “I’m sor—”

  “But I’m glad you’re back.”

  He turned, and the boy flinched, more than half-expecting yet another slap, but the calloused hands remained by the old man’s sides.

  “I wanted you to know what’s coming. What we’re getting into. Dunno if you would have understood, the way you were.”

  “What we’re . . . what do you mean?”

  A thumb hooked over a bony shoulder, and the boy looked about, finally noticing where they were. As he’d stumbled along in some sort of shock, the old man had led him to the edge of a road that ended in a series of buildings. Dead ahead was the flat, open pad and canopy of a gas station. To the right of the station was a building bearing a black and orange sign: Village Inn. To the left was a structure with a tall sign in the parking lot, a red square with a huge yellow M. Beyond these were more buildings, house roofs in the distance.

  “A town?”

  “Yup.”

  The boy began to shake.

  “But . . . you said they . . . they gather in towns, don’t they?”

  “Yup.”

  “Like at the house . . . but worse?”

  “Might be worse. Think it is. Ought to be, this being the only town for miles. But you want to be sure, you take a good whiff.”

  Though his shaking grew worse, the boy closed his eyes and sniffed a great lungful of air. They were still a ways from the town, but the breeze was moving in the right direction. Halfway through his sniff, the long inhale became a short gag.

  Rot.

  Decomposition.

  “So, what, you want to go in there?”

  His voice was rising, already past the limits the old man had set and getting louder.

  “We can’t just avoid them? Just pass by and go?”

  “If they’s gathered,” said the old man, a calm counterpoint to the boy’s welling panic, “that’s the perfect time to hunt ’em.”

  “Hunt them?” The boy whirled, eyes wide. His voice trembled as he flailed an arm toward the buildings. “What, we’re just going to walk on in there?”

  “Nope.”

  The boy stared, but the old man’s face and voice were calm and serious. Hope thrust itself into his heart.

  “We’re not?”

  “Nope. I’m gonna carry you.”

  One hard fist lashed out, connecting with the boy’s jaw, and the darkness swarmed up again to swallow him whole.

  He woke to a bear hug, right around his chest and arms, like his father used to give him when he was small. Thin arms enveloped him, squeezing tighter than Dad ever had, lifting him off his feet in a painful embrace. Those wiry limbs hurt, the band of pressure running straight across his solar plexus, making it hard to breathe.

  He opened his eyes.

  The world was a carousel. The Village Inn sign flashed by. The great yellow M. The deserted gasoline pumps came into view, close but low. He looked down at his dusty boots, dangling nearly two feet off the ground. With a lurch and a painful squeeze of those wiry arms, the ground receded another eight or ten inches.

  The arms, he saw, were a rope, yellow and fairly thick, wrapped twice about him, pinning his elbows to his sides.

  Another squeeze and jerk and he was better than three feet from the ground and fighting for every breath. He threw his head back, craning his neck to see the rope that bound him running up over a protrusion in the canopy above, a pipe painted to match the surrounding material. The natural twist in the rope had set him slowly spinning as the rope stretched to accommodate his weight.

  Part of his mind tried, uselessly, to identify the pipe. The rest of his mind wanted to know what the hell was going on, and how he’d gotten there, though the pain in his jaw from the remembered punch was a pretty good clue as to the latter.

  “You’re awake. Good.”

  The old man’s voice came from somewhere over by the small, glass-fronted building sitting alongside the pumps, a red lettered sign showing Kwik-Mart on a white background. The words rolled across the open lot, shockingly loud and crystal clear, with no attempt at quiet. Another jerk and rise stole his breath for a moment, and he gasped as the world spun. When he could, he hissed words in a panicked stage whisper.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?” The old man actually sounded jolly, his words booming across the silent space. “I told you I’d find a use for you. Weren’t you listening?”

  The slow, rhythmic jerks squeezed the breath from his body again as the old man hoisted him higher and higher. Eventually the old cowboy was satisfied: the jerking stopped and the boy struggled to breathe, flexing his arms hard against the rope, trying to create some slack about his chest. After a minute, the old man strode out and stood beneath him, stretching up one hand to swat at the boots suspended above his head.

  “Looks about right.”

  He carried something in one hand, and with a quick flip he looped a string over the right boot, hanging the object from the dangling foot, then held on to it, halting the boy’s slow spin.

  “Why . . . are you . . . doing this?” the boy managed, between straining breaths.

  “Why? Couple of reasons. One is that there’s bound to be an ammo shop in this town somewheres, and once we thin the herd a little, there’s nothing to stop someone from going looking for it, if they’re careful. T’other . . . well, I’ll just keep that to myself for now.”

  He squinted up at his gasping prisoner.

  “Sorry, boy. But this needs doin’.”

  He pulled something from his back pocket, a metal rod about a foot long, then reached out to thrust the rod through the open center of the thing hanging from that right boot.

  A triangle of metal: an old-fashioned dinner bell.

  “Come and git it!”

  The yell was loud, but the boy was shocked at the volume of that ringing bell. His foot jerked as the metal rod beat the triangle, the sound drilling into his ears, filling up his head with that sharp metallic clang. Stunned by the noise, he never even saw the old man retreat to safety, but reeled in his rope prison, setting himself slowly spinning once more.

  Then he saw them.

  They passed through his vision as he spun, lurching into the far side of the parking lot, coming out of the town in response to the bell. These were the freshest of the local dead, not yet decomposed to the point where their muscles were unresponsive, and thus could still run after a fashion. Moving clumsily, but with surprising swiftness, they scuttle-staggered toward him, gray-skinned hands reaching, fingers already grasping though still dozens of yards distant. He had time to notice their jaws already working, teeth bared and chomping up and down with a machine-like rapidity, the movement indicating not a whit of intelligence, but speaking instead to a terrible, all-consuming hunger, before his lazy rotation took them out of his view and put them behind him.

  He struggled for breath against the crushing rope, gagging as the smell of the things intensified, their putrescent fumes preceding them. Footsteps, arrhythmic and staggering, drew swiftly closer as he struggled, twisting his body to increase his spin and bring them back into view, though that view was already constricting. Every bit of air he managed was tainted with their terrible stink. He tasted rot, felt it in his mouth, the back of his throat, and he gagged. Black spots nibbled the edges of his vision, spots that grew and multiplied, blocking out the world. Familiar voices spoke in his mind, telling him to get in the barrel, to hide in the dark; that everything would be all right.

  “Better lift them feet, boy! There’s a couple of tall ’uns in there!”

  He gasped as something struck his foot, the sudden inrush of oxygen, no matter how rancid, pushing back the darkness a bit. The blow to his boot gave him his wish, spinning him faster, though by now the rotation was irrelevant. They were all around him, reaching, grabbing, straining toward him, though only the tallest of them could manage.

  The old man’s voice rang out over the attack, the dead ignoring the sound in favor of the l
ive, wiggling food hanging just in front of them.

  “I told you! Lift them legs, boy! They start eating from down there, it’s gonna take you a ways to die.”

  Then the old man laughed.

  Something rose up in the boy, something feral and snarling. Alongside the memories of Mom and Dad telling him everything would be okay were new, powerful recollections: the old man calling him useless; cuffing him, slapping him, kicking him awake; the old man popping pills all day while the boy was a beast of burden; the old bastard hoisting him up here as live bait.

  Mingling with his terror, shoving aside memories of Mom and Dad to make room, this new thing flooded the boy’s awareness and rather than fighting it, he focused on it.

  He hated that old man.

  More of the walking dead filled the parking lot, some older and more decrepit, unable to do more than shamble, others simply staggering in from farther away, but all of them joined the throng gathered beneath him, the only sounds their shuffling feet and champing, biting, gnashing teeth.

  He hoisted his legs higher, clumsily holding the crooks of his knees with his hands when his thighs and abdomen grew tired. Groping hands flailed beneath him. One and then another of the fetid, rotting paws slapped the triangle depending from his ankle, setting him spinning faster.

  He was just thanking Fate the things were too far gone to make the connection and grab the dinner bell, when one of the grasping hands went through the triangle as it circled above the crowd. The bony, greening wrist caught in one of the corners and the creature jerked mindlessly downward, simply trying to free itself. The string about his boot yanked his knees free of his grasp, stretching his leg downward. He stopped spinning, leg extended, the binding rope cutting cruelly into his torso as the creature below him, the remains of a woman, threw its full weight against the triangle.

  The boy screamed in pain. The string snapped.

  A hand slapped his lowered ankle, catching it in a grip like steel, though when he looked down the fingers clutching his boot were swollen, puffy-looking as rising bread dough. The boy couldn’t tell which of the upturned faces the hideous hand belonged to; there was no change in any of the blank eyes, no break in the rhythm of a single set of champing teeth.