A Post Apocalyptic Thriller

from the slashing blade.

“I’m gonna kill you, you sonuvabitch!” the kid howled. “I’m gonna cut
you up, and then I’m gonna—”

The kid’s words caught in his throat, and he froze like an insect suddenly
engulfed in amber. A loud, ominous crrraaaack! filled the air, then came the
sound of a hailstorm on a tin roof as shattered glass rained down across the
floor.

The glass had finally given way. The swarm was in!

Those creatures at the very front were caught off-balance when the glass
gave way, so many fell to the floor in a heap, but on the swarm came,
snapping their jaws, clawing the air, and trampling over their fallen comrades
with as much regard as a man treading on fallen leaves.

The kid looked over his shoulder at the advancing swarm, and suddenly
consumed by his own terror, he immediately forgot all thoughts of vengeance
and took to half-sliding, half-scuttling away from the oncoming creatures,
dragging the cumbersome chair by an ankle and squealing like a frightened
girl.

Mason disregarded the kid entirely. He scooped Mackenzie into his arms
and sprinted into the kitchen, then he settled the girl into a tight recess under
the far side of the counter and shouted over the bedlam, “Wait right here!”

“No, Mace!” she pleaded. “Don’t leave me!”

She reached out for him, and he took hold of her hand, then he dropped
down to his knees and reeled the girl into his arms.

“I’ll be right back, I promise,” he assured her. “Trust me, Mack.”

Reluctantly, she let him go, then she nodded nervously, drew her knees
up under her chin, and wrapped her arms around her legs. Before Mason had
time to reconsider, he left her there and tore back the way he’d come, straight
toward the invading swarm. He saw the kid scrabbling backward, squealing
in utter panic, but when the kid back-crawled into his path, he leapt over him
like an Olympic hurdler and continued on to his real objective. His bag and
weapon were laying in a pile near the window. Either one of those things was
worth more than a thousand mewling little punks.

Two creepers were between him and his objective, but he didn’t hesitate
a moment. The bag was important, but that big chunk of cast iron was
absolutely vital, so he lowered his shoulder like a linebacker and ran straight
at the creatures. He caught the first squarely in the chest and sent it spiraling
through the air in a tangle of arms and legs, then the other creature came at
him with claws out and teeth gnashing, so he lashed out a foot, kicking its
legs out from under it. When the creeper dropped it to its knees, he levelled
another kick to its head as if he were intent on sending a football into the end
zone. His foot connected with the creature’s chin with such force that it was
sent reeling back, smacking the back of its skull on the floor with a sickening
keerack!

He grabbed up his weapon just as a blur of movement clouded his
peripheral vision. Without wasting precious milliseconds in identifying the
threat, he stabbed with the back end of the weapon in that direction and felt a
satisfying shudder reverberate through the staff. He spun on his heels and
swung again, trusting his senses that another was there, and sure enough,
once his eyes caught up to his actions, he saw a young female collapse to the
floor, the side of her head shattered to dust.

He chanced a quick glance to the breach and saw creepers pouring
through in a flood. Some tore themselves open on the jagged shards of glass
at the edges, and the odd one stumbled over the low threshold, but on they
came. There may have been a dozen inside already, but it would be triple that
in another minute. Even with the attention of the swarm divided between him
and the kid, Mason knew that every second he spent fighting the things put
him one step closer to being cut off and surrounded. He took one more swing
at a creature who stumbled too close, spared a few seconds to collect his
knapsack from the floor, then rose to lunge at another creature that happened
to wander into his path of retreat. As the better part of its forehead ripped
away, there was a bestial howl from without, and Mason’s attention was back
on the breach.

Apparently, the kid’s screeching was louder than he’d thought, for no
fewer than three wilders were tearing across the road toward the restaurant.
All three arrived at once and ploughed into the back of the slow-moving
creepers, but as soon as the mass of bodies proved themselves a hindrance to
the wilders’ progress, they began to tear through the swarm, clawing them
aside with all of the nicety and comportment of a family of bears ripping into

a beehive. And all the while, the objects of their rage made no protest. The
creepers were bloodied, bashed and beaten, but those that weren’t
incapacitated simply struggled slowly back to their feet and resumed their
slow plodding gait, filling the space behind the wilders like soil backfilling a
tunnel.

Mason was clearing a path back to the kitchen when the first wilder
broke through the crowd and came at him. By now, he was able to switch
gears in an instant, so the length of cast iron was off his shoulder and
swinging before the creature could cover half the distance. The leading edge
of the weapon caught the thing mid-stride just above the temple and cracked
its skull open with a spray of blood, and as the thing dropped to its knees, he
brought the weapon around and down, delivering another blow that split the
creature’s skull down to the bridge of its nose like a hot knife through butter.

As the creature slumped lifelessly to the floor, a young female wilder
broke through the swarm and came at him in a headlong charge. Mason had
been lining up a swing to remove the head of one little old creeper who had
come dangerously close, but the little man was suddenly thrown aside, and
Mason shifted targets in mid-swing. A little dip of the shoulder and a pivot in
the hip, and the club bypassed the little creeper to smash into the side of the
wilder’s long, elegant neck. If he’d had the means to sharpen the weapon, the
powerful blow would have removed the creature’s head completely. As it
was, the neck folded in like an accordion, the creature’s ear slammed against
its shoulder, and the wilder collapsed to the floor in a heap.

It was taking too long. He had intended to grab his weapon, then run
back to collect Mackenzie and make for the back door, but the swarm was
coming as fast as a freight train. Even now, there were three others within
striking distance, but for every one he dropped, two more took its place. He
was never going to get ahead of it. He had to go. Now!

He spun on his heels, bowled over one last plodding thing in his way,
and raced back to the kitchen. Behind him, the kid was screaming and crying
and trying to back through a row of tables on his ass, still dragging the chair
along with him, but Mason ignored him completely. He rounded the counter
at a run, gathered Mackenzie into his arms, and squandered another fraction
of a second to cast one last fleeting glimpse at where he’d just been.

The swarm had split roughly in two, and both halves were moving with

astounding speed. One faction was surging toward the kitchen after a
retreating Mason, and the other was closing in on the kid. Even surrounded so
completely, the kid might still have been able to get away if he would just cut
himself loose from the chair and run, but the fool was so consumed by terror
that all he could do was scuttle away on his backside, inch by fumbling inch.
Consequently, when the last of the wilders finally ripped through the swarm
and came at him, the outcome was inevitable.

The kid raised his pathetic knife at the last moment and managed to
impale a wilder through the chest as it fell on him, but with two hundred
pounds of dead weight now pinning him to the ground, the rest descended.
The first was a gray-haired old creeper in a bloodied housedress. It dropped
clumsily to its knees and unceremoniously sunk its teeth into his abdomen,
tearing it open to expose a tangle of intestines. As the kid’s scream turned
into a blood-curdling shriek, a second creeper fell across him and began
tearing great swathes of flesh from his chest with its claws. Then a morbidly
obese male clad only in soiled underwear stumbled over the female and
dropped bodily across the kid’s legs. The creeper’s fat jowls quivered as its
mouth gaped wide, then it closed its ravening jaws directly around the kid’s
crotch.

Ignoring the shrieks, Mason carried Mackenzie through the kitchen to the
back door. He lowered her to the ground and felt her hand slip into the small
of his back to grab hold of his waistband, then he brought up his club and
flipped the dead bolt. With the swarm closing in, there was no time for
finesse. He flung the door open, hurled both of them into the alley, and
slammed the door shut behind them.

CHAPTER

XVII

Mason was convinced that one of these times he would leap from a fire and
actually land someplace safe. Now, he wondered if there was anywhere in
this hellscape that wasn’t ablaze. A dozen or more creatures were waiting to
greet them as they burst through the door, and more were sure to come.

“Stay close, Mack,” he ordered, reaching rudely around to shove the girl
tight against his back, “This is going to get rough.”

He waited just long enough to hear her call out, “I’m good, Mace,” and
then he cut loose.

With no more walls or ceiling to restrict his swing, he could use his new
weapon to its full potential. He was a strong man, and the big chunk of cast
iron was heavy. Together, they combined to produce a simply awesome
amount of force. It seemed to take forever for the big slab of metal to start
moving, but once in motion, it built up such an astounding amount of kinetic
energy in such a short amount of time that the results were positively
devastating.

The first head it encountered was blasted into atoms and sprayed across
the alley with no discernible loss in momentum, so Mason continued the
swing in a circle over his head and brought it down directly on the crest of
the next creature’s skull, nearly pounding the creature into the ground like a
spike. He immediately pivoted and levelled the weapon at another creature.
The thing’s skull split open like spoiled fruit, then the weapon continued on
to catch an old, emaciated creature just above the neckline. This time, the dull
edge of the weapon tore through a lean neck, neatly cleaved ligament from
bone, and launched the detached head into the air like a line drive into the
center-field bleachers.

But the fight had just begun. Creepers were closing in from all sides, and

Mason couldn’t stop long enough even to take a breath. Knowing that he was
fighting for more lives than his own, he kept the weapon moving, clobbering,
clubbing, and hammering, all the while advancing step by step toward the
perceived sanctuary of Market Street. He turned, he pivoted, he spun, he
dodged, he lunged, and for every move he made, Mackenzie stayed right with
him. She kept a firm grip on his waistband, and she danced and skipped and
hopped and flitted; anything she had to do to stay connected to Mason while
not hindering his movements. They were a team, but they were more than
that. They were one. Only by working in such perfect, flawless concert did
they manage to fight on. As they inched their way toward the end of the
gauntlet, one after another after another of the horrible dead things fell away,
and it began to look like they might actually have a chance.

But even as Mason ploughed through the ranks of creepers, a wilder
appeared at the far end of the alley, undoubtedly attracted by the sounds of
the battle. With a thick mane of hair flowing out behind and a thick wedge of
beard framing its gnashing jaws, the creature charged at them with the speed
and fury of a bull. Mason had just used his weapon to pound a young male
into the ground, and with no time to regain the club’s momentum, he quickly
planted one end of the thing against his foot and held the shaft outward at an
angle. A fraction of a second later, the wilder slammed into the cast iron bar
at such a speed that its entire frontal bone tore away like the top of a soft-
boiled egg.

The creature slumped to the ground in a lifeless heap, but there was no
time to celebrate. They were surrounded, and more were coming. Many more.
Most of them were the slow and stumbling creepers, but the longer the fight
raged, the more wilders were drawn in. And whenever they were, it was up to
Mason’s early warning detection system to keep them both alive.

“One from the right!” Mackenzie hollered, tugging at the back of his
jeans as if it were the pull-rope of a church bell.

Mason began his swing as soon as he heard the alert, and a wilder
appeared around a corner just as the massive weapon crossed its path. The
creature was thrown against the fence, its neck shattered into pulp, and
Mason stepped into a pair of creepers, sweeping the legs out from beneath
one and slamming the club down on the other’s skull.

“Behind!” the girl shouted, then she ducked out of the way as Mason

wheeled around in full swing to connect with the cranium of some creature
whose presence he barely had time to register before it was turned into goo.

“From the left! One fast, one slow!” Mackenzie cried out then, so Mason
stepped back from a big creeper to give himself room to maneuver and swung
away blindly. A wilder rounded the corner just as the weapon intersected its
path, and the heavy cast iron thundered across its midsection, pulverizing its
ribs and exploding its heart in its chest. Mason continued the swing up and
over his head, and brought it down just as a young, snarling wilder no older
than Mackenzie tore into view. The power of the blow effectively crumpled
the boy into an unrecognizable heap of skin and bones, and Mason ended its
gurgling death throes with the heel of his boot between its eyes.

By the time they were halfway up the alley toward Market Street, this
remarkable team had left a trail of devastated bodies behind. Twenty or more
lay dead or crippled in their wake, and for the second time in as many days,
Mason was silently glad that Mackenzie couldn’t see. They were both
spattered in blood and gore, and the ground literally ran red. And still there
was no end in sight. Even if they made it out of the alley, there was no telling
what was waiting for them ahead. For all he knew, Market Street might be as
thick with the dead as this place. In fact, the entire planet might be just like
this alley. From here on, existence might just be a constant slog, battling from
one mutilated corpse to the next.

Mason took a single moment to reach a gentle hand around his back to
give Mackenzie a quick pat, then he brought the weapon back to his shoulder
and continued the carnage.

Hard swing... Now! Skull crushed. Okay, now a downward tilt. Legs
obliterated. Good enough. Two steps forward to leave it behind, an upswing
to another’s chin to knock it to its knees, then a kill shot to the skull. Mack
calling... One coming from behind. Quick one-eighty, and a lateral swing.
Good strength, but too low. Body shot. Knocked sideways and shattered arm,
but not down. Continue the swing up and over so no momentum is lost, step
back so the fucker can’t get inside the turn radius and aim higher. Perfect!
Square to the head. Spin around, make sure Mack’s still attached, and
continue on. Eight between us and the corner. Who knows what beyond?
Fight your way to the corner and see. It couldn’t be worse than here. Get out
of this gauntlet, and deal with the next gauntlet when you’re there...

They were twenty feet from the corner, and Mason was rapidly running
out of wind. Another shout from Mackenzie spun him around, and the
weapon connected with the side of a wilder’s head, but it took another two
blows to finish the thing off. As strong and fit as he was, it was clear that
Mason’s strength was ebbing.

He couldn’t keep it up for much longer. He needed to rest. Every blow
was being delivered with a just a bit less impact. A shot that would have
turned a skull to pulp a few short minutes ago now only knocked a creature
off-balance, then more energy had to be expended to finish it off.

Too much... Too many...

“From the left!” Mackenzie shouted, tugging at his jeans.

He brought up the weapon, but now it rested on his shoulder for a
fraction of a second before being swung. And when at last it was launched
toward the oncoming wilder, it succeeded only in stunning the thing with a
middling blow across the top of the skull. A swath of scalp tore loose to flop
against the creature’s cheek, but the beast quickly righted itself and came at
him again. Nearly spent, Mason stepped back and lifted a foot. The creature
tripped over the obstacle and splayed facedown on the ground, and it was all
Mason could do to hoist his weapon and let gravity drag it through the back
of the thing’s head before it could clamber back to its feet.

Eight yards. No, make it ten. Thirty feet to the corner. Once they were
out of the gauntlet, things had to get better. They had to. Only two dead
things between here and there.

Swing away, Mace, swing away...

One creature collapsed with a shattered knee, and the weapon was back
on Mason’s shoulder. When the next creeper came, it was all he could do to
plant a hand against the creature’s chest and shove it backward. Fortunately,
the thing tripped over its own feet and fell to the ground, and Mason gathered
enough strength to drop the point of the weapon on its head. The skull
cracked open, but the creature continued to wriggle beneath the staff like a
wounded fish at the end of a spear. Mason leaned his weight against the staff
and felt it sink in, inch by gory inch. At last the creature stopped moving, and
he pulled the weapon free with a wet, gooey shhhluuuk.!

And at last they were there. The corner. Market Street.

Halle-fuckin’-lujah...

But no sooner had they arrived than Mason’s heart sunk into his chest.
True to his worst imaginings, the place was a veritable thoroughfare for the
dead and the undead. The street was wide, but it was as dense with walking
corpses and raging wilders as any place he had yet seen. His first inclination
was to turn back, but he took a moment to pick out details, and the more he
regarded this new environment, the more potential he saw. Yes, there were
exponentially greater numbers here, but there was also more room. Room to
move, room to side-step, and room to run. And there were abandoned cars
everywhere to duck behind or block a creature’s advance. And there were
escape routes everywhere. Doorways, and side streets, and alleyways all
along Market Street. It wasn’t all bad, considering.

Actually, he finally decided, this isn’t bad at all...

But then came a sound that made him reconsider. It was a car. No.
Bigger than that. A truck? A bus, maybe? Hell, with the usual noise of
civilization cut off, it sounded like a tank.

Then he saw it, coming from the north with all of San Francisco’s towers
as a backdrop. It was a supersized pickup. Something out of a redneck’s wet
dream. It was a Ford F350, as far as he could tell, but heavily modified. It sat
high above the roadway on big, fat, knobby tires, and had an array of
floodlights all along the top of a chrome roll bar. With the amount of
clearance under the chassis, the thing looked like it could roll clear over an
ordinary car with room to spare.

Mason had always been a firm believer in the ‘big truck, little penis’
school of thought, so it didn’t surprise him to see three big, burly, good ol’
boys in the back of the thing. These Duck Dynasty rejects were standing
shoulder to shoulder, one meaty hand on the roll bar and the other on a piece
of heavy artillery. Mason was no expert in firearms, but even he could
recognize the curled, banana-clip magazine of an AK. He didn’t know what
the others were, but they all looked like what Schwarzenegger might brandish
in any of a dozen of his movies.

He reached back for Mackenzie’s hand and brought her around beside
him with a cautionary, “Shhh....,” before scooting her off to a nearby
storefront. He ducked her down below a bush and pulled his pistol from his

waistband before dropping to his knees beside her.

“Danger, Mack,” he hushed. “Stay still.”

The girl dutifully crouched into a ball against him.

“People?” she whispered nervously.

“Yes,” Mason hushed, “With guns.”

“Dangerous?”

Mason cradled her head against his chest and watched the vehicle
approach through a gap in the bush.

“They’re people,” he said simply.

The pickup was close now, only a block away and coming at a slow roll.
These were no survivors looking to escape the city. If so, they’d be hauling
ass. These good ol’ boys were crawling along in a big, little-dick monster
truck bristling with guns. The massive engine was growling, the exhaust
manifolds were roaring, and if that wasn’t enough, music suddenly started to
blast from massive speakers set behind the bulkhead. Perhaps not
surprisingly, Mason actually recognized the song. There was Angus Young’s
guitar riffs like a chainsaw on metal, then the flame-thrower voice of Brian
Johnson rising above it all, chanting, “Thun-der!... Thun-der!...”

A loose swarm of creepers was already stumbling and bumbling toward
them from all directions, but the bizarre caravan was making such a racket
that wilders came charging in from far and wide. They appeared from every
side street and from the mouths of alleys and from parking lots and open
doorways and from everywhere at once, tearing through the ranks of the dead
as if they were standing still and charging headlong at the monster truck,
howling with rage.

“I was caught in the middle of a railroad track... I looked ‘round and
knew there was no turning back...”

Within a handful of seconds, twenty or more wild, growling things
converged on the vehicle. They came at a manic run, slamming against the
sides of the truck and clawing up at the humans standing in the back.

“My mind raced and I thought, what could I do?... But there was no
help, no help from you...”

What came next was almost predictable. The monster truck stopped,
guns came up, someone gave a signal, and the ensuing fusillade nearly
drowned out the blaring music.

“Sounds of the drums beating in my heart... The thunder of guns tore me
apart... You’ve been... Thunderstruck!”

It was a hail of gunfire unlike anything Mason could have imagined.
There was no fire-discipline among the men, but there didn’t have to be.
They all shot at once, and the sheer power of the weapons cut the creatures
down like wheat under the scythe. Those closest to the vehicle were literally
blasted to pieces by rapid-fire bursts of assault rifles set to full-auto, then
those farther back were targeted. Some fell immediately, but others absorbed
enough lead to sink a tugboat and kept on coming. Mason saw limbs torn
away and bodies stitched with bloody craters of gore, but on they came. It
was only when their bodies could finally take no more that they crumpled to
the ground, but others would quickly appear from out of nowhere to take
their place.

As difficult as it was for the good ol’ boys to take down the wilders, the
slow, shambling creepers were even more problematic. There seemed to be
no end to them, and their lifeless bodies could take an awesome amount of
abuse before they went down. Mason watched as two men emptied entire
clips into a single creature and barely slowed it down. On it came, like a
silent spectre. Only when another bullet in a haphazard spray of lead
managed to hit it in the head did the creature fall, but for every one they
felled, two or three others would invariably appear from some other quarter.

The battle went on and on and on. The dead came from everywhere at
once in a ceaseless swarm, and every round fired drew more wilders in. It
was butchery on an endless loop, and Mason began to wonder if there would
ever be an end to it. At last, one of the rounds pinged against the wall of the
building directly behind him, and he finally abandoned his vigil, ducking low
and cradling Mackenzie tight against his body. The girl wrapped her arms
around his neck, tucked her head under his chin, and there they huddled while
the war raged on and on and on.

As the last beats of the guitar pounded from the speaker and the song
ended, the gunfire petered out into sporadic bursts. Mason chanced a quick
peek over the bush and saw the men in celebration. There were high-fives,

and back-slaps. and choruses of “Fuckin’-A!” and “That’s what I’m talkin’
about!” and all the other things tough guys always said to prove their
manhood. More than a few cans of beer were snapped open, and a couple of
bottles made the rounds, but Mason’s attention was fixed on the good ol’ boy
with the AK. The idiot was so fueled with adrenaline and testosterone and
alcohol that he didn’t realize his jeans had been torn sometime during the
battle. It wasn’t much. Just a little rip, slightly above one knee. The widening
little circle of red was barely even noticeable.

Mason ducked back down and hushed for Mackenzie to stay perfectly
still. The last thing they needed now was for one of the half-drunk fools with
a gun to see the rustling of a bush, so they hunkered down close to the ground
and didn’t move a muscle. The music started up again and the occasional
gunshot echoed through the street, but the party was quickly winding down.
At last, the vehicle flared to life and began to pull away. One of the men
threw an empty bottle at one of the corpses with a, “See you in hell, mother
fucker!” and the other men cheered and laughed and lobbed a few more
bullets, then the pickup growled away, south down Market Street.

Mason didn’t move for a minute or more. He cradled Mackenzie in his
arms and whispered into her delicate little ear, “Wait, Mack. Not yet. Wait.”

At last, the roar of the engine and the music were no more than distant
thunder, so Mason chanced a peek. Sure enough, the vehicle was gone. He
waited another thirty seconds to make sure, then he unfolded himself from
Mackenzie and climbed cautiously to his feet.

Around them was mayhem on an epic scale. Bodies and bits of bodies
covered the ground from one side of the street to the other and far down both
ends of the block. Apparently, what the good ol’ boys lacked in discipline,
they more than made up for in bloodlust, but both qualities were clearly
evident. Yes, they’d mown down dozens upon dozens, but even now there
was movement among the corpses, and at least four creatures were already
climbing awkwardly to their feet.

“Okay, Mack,” he said, helping Mackenzie to her feet and taking her by
the hand, “Let’s go.”

“Who were they?” Mackenzie held his hand tightly. “Police? Army?”

“No,” Mason told her. “Either a group of guys trying to take back the

city, or a bunch of yahoos looking for kicks. I’m leaning toward yahoos
myself.”

“Bad yahoos?”

“Probably,” Mason told her truthfully.

The girl turned her blind eyes up to meet his and shook her head.

“Not everyone can be bad, Mace.”

Mason tenderly picked a few errant leaves from her big tangle of hair.

“I don’t trust people with guns, Mack.”

“We’re people with guns,” she reminded him. “They were probably just
scared.”

He picked away one last leaf and gave her mop an affectionate little
tousle.

“They didn’t look very scared to me.”

“People act funny when they’re scared. Some hide in a closet, some run
straight into a burning building, and some do stupid things that seem brave so
no one knows they’re scared.”

Mason considered the truth of the statement and finally harrumphed,
“You should be on a debate team, Mack.”

“Hey! That’s what Sarah says!” Her face lit up, but then some of the
light dissipated as she confessed, “‘Course, she usually says it when I do
something wrong and try to talk my way out of it.”

Mason laughed aloud, but he quickly caught himself and stifled the
noise.

“I can’t wait to meet her,” he said through a grin. “We can compare
notes.”

Mackenzie blushed and smiled demurely, then the smile faded and her
eyes dropped to the ground. Mason instantly regretted that he’d stumbled
down that path, but it was too late to go back. A pall descended over the pair,
and they both stood in abject silence as if mourning the uncertain fate of dear
Aunt Sarah. At last, Mason looked to several dead things appearing from far
up the block and broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Well Mack, whether the yahoos were good or bad, they did us a favor
by thinning out the herd. I was planning on hunkering down for a while, but I
suggest we take advantage of the situation and follow in the idiots’ wake of
destruction as far as we can.”

The girl nodded gloomily and said nothing more as they set off again.

With the advent of the good ol’ boys in their little-dick monster truck, the
going was suddenly a thousand times easier than Mason could have
imagined. They walked. They assumed a path down the middle of the wide-
open road, and they walked. They didn’t run, and they didn’t fight. They
simply walked. And despite the gruesome sights, and the bodies they had to
step over or around, it was heaven. Mason had to divert them from time to
time around a line of parked cars or into a doorway to let a wilder hurtle past
after the distant sounds of AC/DC echoing through the streets from afar, but
mostly he simply walked hand in hand with Mackenzie and rested his weary
body.

Two miles... he thought to himself. Three at the outside. Get to the dog
park, find out one way or the other about Aunt Sarah, then a beeline straight
out of the city. After all we’ve been through, ain’t nothin’ gonna stop us
now...

CHAPTER

XVIII

He could hear Becks’ voice in his head as plain as day.

“That’s what you get for even thinking it, Mace. If you want to make
God laugh, just tell him your plans...”

As the dome of the city hall came into view and the street opened up into
the vast United Nations Plaza, Mason could see the way ahead literally
teeming with the dead. They shuffled, they stumbled, and they crawled in a
dozen different directions, but as these two new humans entered the range of
whatever sense it was that drove them, they slowly but surely reoriented
themselves toward them, and on they came.

He wanted to reply to the voice with something like This is what I get for
hoping, Becks... but one thought of Mackenzie forced the defeatist words
from his mind. Still, he couldn’t shake the image of a bearded old man
rocking back on his throne, laughing his ethereal ass off.

He had intended to swing them south down 7th Street for a straight shot
to Mission Creek, but now they’d have to find another way. With a solid wall
of buildings all along the south side of Market, they would have to retreat all
the way back to 6th Street and try a parallel course. He turned Mackenzie in
an about-face, and his heart suddenly rose into his throat.

He held a hand to Mackenzie’s shoulder to stop her in her tracks.

“Trouble, Mace?” she hushed.

“Too many,” he told her flatly. “Too many ahead, and too many
behind.”

“The yahoos went that way. I can hear them.” Mackenzie pointed
generally northward and started to sing along to music Mason could almost
imagine he could hear, “Are you ready for a good time, then get ready for the

night line...”

“Thank goodness that’s opposite where we’re going, Mack.” Mason
corralled her onto the wide cobblestone sidewalk. “Now look. We’re
surrounded, but on the bright side, it’s only creepers. It looks like the yahoos
took all the wilders with them.”

“Can we get around if we run?”

“No room,” he said simply, then a Tennyson poem came to mind and he
idly mumbled an updated version, barely under his breath. “Creepers to right
of them, creepers in front of them, creepers in back of them, neared and
threatened...”

Thirty or more were closing in like a quickly tightening noose, so Mason
quickly ran through a dozen scenarios at once. But each one was as
impossible as the last. Damn! Well, if he couldn’t find a way around the
goddam swarm, he’d bloody well go through them. He watched the swarm
carefully and began to plot a path that might offer them the best chance to
barge through, but every time he decided that one group or another might be
fractionally slower or smaller or older or frailer than the others, the entire
swarm shifted and surged, and whatever advantage there might have been
melted away. He had almost made up his mind to hitch Mackenzie to his
back and charge into the crowd, come what may, but his own words suddenly
came back to him.

If you can’t go around, go through!

He looked to the buildings forming a solid wall along the south side of
the street, and it finally dawned on him. Of course! They couldn’t go around,
so they’d go through. Not through the swarm, but straight through a building.
In the front door and out the back, where the swarm would never be able to
follow. But where? The federal building on the corner? Not a chance. They
would lock that sucker up tight. The bar right beside it? Impossible. Steel
shutters, closed and locked. Chinese restaurant? The front window would be
easily breached, but he could see shadowy movement inside. The squat little
hotel? Doable, but too much potential for its own swarm on the inside. Strip
joint? Hmm, now there was a real possibility. The so-called ‘Market Street
Cinema’ had long-since gone out of business, and the doors were supposed to
be locked and gated, but the place was notorious for having a virtual

revolving door. What with kids looking for cheap thrills, and self-professed
‘ghost-hunters’ plying their trade, he doubted any padlock had lasted more
than a few days on the old stripper bar.

The swarm kept closing in, removing one option after another as the
noose tightened. The closest creeper was only a dozen yards away. A young
female in a short red cocktail dress, her dangling earrings tinkling like little
bells to mark every clumsy step.

Ting... ting... ting...

There was no more time for debate. He had to either take on the swarm,
or attempt an end run. Both had their risks, but the choice was an easy one.
He gathered Mackenzie under his wing and hurried them to the front of the
garishly painted Market Street Cinema.

As he’d hoped, the padlock on the security gate was broken, but when he
gave the glass doors a pull, he found them locked, and a red flag immediately
went up in his mind. Was someone home, after all? He shielded his eyes to
peer through the glass, but it was too dark to see anything other than his own
reflection. Well, it didn’t really matter either way. This was their exit. With
the swarm so close, they were absolutely committed.

He broke through one of the doors with the end of the cast iron weapon
and quickly hoisted Mackenzie in his arms. He squeezed the girl carefully
through the broken shards of glass and had barely lowered her to her feet
when the attack came.

The creature had once been a young man, barely out of his teens. Now it
was a wild, snarling beast that appeared out of the shadows of the dark lobby
like magic, and threw itself at these two intruders with the ferocity of a jungle
cat. It ran at them, gnashing its teeth and raking the air with its claws, and
Mason barely had time to raise his weapon and step in front of Mackenzie
before it was on them. The wilder slammed into Mason, but it was held at bay
by the weapon held across its chest. It snapped its jaws and howled like an
animal, but for all of its fury, it could only flail against the unseen barrier.
The howl turned to a roar, and red drool frothed at the corners of its mouth,
but however much it thrashed and fought and clawed, it couldn’t quite reach
its prey.

Mason outweighed the creature by fifty pounds, but he could barely

contain it. He felt himself being pushed back by the insane fury of the wilder,
but however hard he shoved back, the creature kept coming. He was being
inched backward, step by faltering step, and as soon as he and the girl
clinging to his back came up against the door they’d just broken through,
they would either be cut to ribbons on the remaining shards of glass or forced
bodily back into the swarm. He tried to kick at the creature’s legs, but when
he tried to lift a foot, he lost his balance and almost fell. He then tried to
wrestle the weapon into an angle to force the creature off to the side, but the
wilder was simply too strong. And then, just as he ran out of ideas, the
situation worsened.

A second wilder emerged from out of nowhere. Mason caught a quick
glimpse of long blond hair tangled around what had once been a pretty face,
its brilliant blue eyes now glazed over and thick, full lips now curled back to
expose a double row of snapping, glistening teeth, and then the thing charged.

Mason barely had time to shout, “Mack! Left! Go!” before it hurled
itself across the lobby at him.

Mackenzie skittered out from behind Mason’s back and huddled low and
out of the way against the nearest wall, and now that Mason had a little more
room, he acted. Before the female could close the distance, he took a step
back and pivoted his upper body, throwing both he and the male off-balance.
Then, as the male lurched to one side, he flung his weight to the opposite side
and simultaneously shoved back with one end of the bar while releasing the
other end entirely. Already unbalanced, the creature pitched forward and fell
awkwardly to the floor.

And just in time. No sooner had he rid himself of the male than the
female was on him. He brought up the weapon horizontally as before and
allowed the wilder to slam into it, then he pulled it quickly away like a
toreador’s cape. The female crashed headlong into the male, and they both
tumbled together in a tangle of limbs. But it was only a brief reprieve. Within
seconds, they were both clambering back to their feet, snarling and howling
and raking the air like feral beasts.

Utterly spent and with the swarm at the gates, Mason did the thing he
least wanted to do. He pulled the pistol from his waistband, flicked the safety,
and fired once into each of the creatures’ heads. The first shot hit the female
directly in the center of the forehead, but the second shot was too hurried.

The side of the male’s skull opened and splashed gore against the wall, but
the creature didn’t fall. Instead, it emitted a horrible, screeching howl,
climbed to its haunches, and leapt at Mason like a feral beast. Mason shot
once more, and the back of the creature’s head exploded in a spray of red. It
hung there for a long, pregnant moment, then it finally canted backward and
dropped to the floor with a resounding thud.

The wilders were dead, but the delay they’d caused had been costly. The
swarm was already at the smashed door. As the first of the dead things
squeezed itself through broken shards of glass, ripping flesh from one arm
and tearing a big enough wound along its side to expose bone, Mason
grabbed Mackenzie’s hand and ran her toward the far end of the lobby.

“This way, Mack! Run!”

He half-guided, half-dragged the girl through a black rectangle and into
the main auditorium, and quickly found himself in pitch blackness. He
brought out his cellphone and clicked the button, but to his horror, the screen
flickered once and went dead. He cursed to himself as he tucked the useless
thing back in his pocket, and now with nothing so much as a match to light
the way, all he could do was grope his way to the back of the theater and
hope to find a way out. He knew that every place like this had fire doors,
usually one to either side of the stage or screen, but this old wreck of a
building had been gutted years ago. There were no neat rows of seats to form
a convenient aisle, so with nothing to help guide them, all he could do was
slow to a walk, try to orient himself in his mind’s eye, and hope he was going
in the right direction.

Barely had they begun to pick their way through the darkness when
Mason felt something brush his leg. He kicked furiously and felt his foot
connect with something small and soft as a little squeal echoed through the
open space. Then he felt something alight on his arm, and it startled him
enough to shake his hand loose from Mackenzie’s and flail at the thing. He
felt something moist and bristly against his skin and felt a chill run up his
spine, then whatever it was hit the floor with a wet slap! and a skittering
sound dissolved into the distance that reminded him of nails on the edge of a
bathtub.

He groped about for Mackenzie’s hand and breathed a sigh of relief
when he felt her fingers embrace his, then the girl gave a gasp and thrashed

excitedly at her head. Mason tried to help by running a hand through her hair,
but he felt something moist and fleshy brush against the very tips of his
fingers and he couldn’t help but shudder as he heard another slap on the floor
and felt a skittering across his foot. Mackenzie uttered one last sound,
somewhere between a shriek of terror and a cry of disgust, then she remained
silent, save for the occasional clipped grunt of revulsion as she flailed an arm
or kicked at some unseen menace.

At last, they came to a wall and found themselves with nowhere to go.

But no, it wasn’t a wall. As Mason groped about, trying to make sense of
where they were, he realized that the impediment was only as high as his
chest. It had to be the stage. That meant they were near the back. Okay, so
which way now? He made a decision, gave Mackenzie’s hand a squeeze, and
wordlessly led her off to the left.

More sounds, now. Beyond the scrabbling and chittering and clicking of
whatever it was that called this dank cavern home. Footsteps. Shuffles. The
jingling of coins in someone’s pocket. The musical ting... ting... ting of
dangling earrings.

The swarm had found their way in, and in the pitch blackness, the
advantage was entirely theirs.

Mason ran his weapon along the edge of the stage to keep his bearings.
He felt something fall on his shoulder and let go of Mackenzie’s hand to
sweep away something soft and pulpy, but when he reached for the girl’s
hand again, he inadvertently brushed her side, and she jumped back from the
touch with a squeal of alarm.

“That was me, Mack!” he called out in a hush, groping the air where
she’d just been, “Where did you go? Where are you? Mack!”

Ting... ting... ting...

The swarm was getting closer. Twenty feet. Maybe less.

“Mace?” Mackenzie hushed from somewhere in the darkness, “Mace?”

He moved toward her voice, sweeping his hand blindly before him and
calling out in a hush, “Mack! This way! Follow my voice! Come this way!”

For one long, interminable moment, he felt nothing but air, and a very

real panic started to take hold. He heard the girl yelp and reached out toward
the sound, but there was nothing there.

“Mack!” he called out, shouting now. “Mack! Come this way. Now!”

Ting... ting... ting...

He could almost feel the air pressure change as the swarm drew near.
Ten feet. Almost within arm’s reach. A few more seconds and they would be
on top of them. He groped for Mackenzie and felt warm flesh kiss the very
tips of his fingers, but it receded again before he could grab hold.

“Mack!” he howled, and made one last desperate grab into the blackness.
This time, fingers skittered across the back of his hand, then at last a small,
warm hand found his, and tiny fingers interlaced his own.

“Mace!” the girl cried, reeling herself in and throwing her arms around
his waist.

“It’s okay, Mack, I’ve got you,” Mason assured her, then he hurriedly
backed them both away from the creatures of the dark.

He had lost contact with the stage in all of the excitement, and now he
fought to reorient himself. He could only guess at how far they must be from
that touchstone, but the direction they needed to go was clear enough. The
tinkling earrings were directly ahead, so he took them in the opposite
direction and prayed with all his might that they were somehow heading
towards a door. A dozen quick steps later, something filmy and foul-smelling
fell across his face, and he instinctively flailed at it, thinking he’d stumbled
into some massive spiderweb. Only when his struggles tore it to pieces did he
realize that it wasn’t a web at all. It was a curtain. The kind an old theater
might use to obscure something as prosaic and incongruous as a door.

“This has to be it, Mack,” he said cautiously, then he reached out and felt
a horizontal bar at waist-height.

He gave a push, and when a widening wedge of daylight appeared along
one side of the door, he put his full weight against the door and shoved his
way through.

Fresh air. Sunlight. They were out!

Mason pushed the door closed behind them, and as his eyes readjusted to

the glaring sunlight, he looked down to see Mackenzie standing stock-still,
head back, and gazing up at the sky. He saw the pinched grimace on her
pretty face and the scowl in her rapidly blinking eyes, and his relief turned to
heartache.

“I know, Mack,” he said, resting a hand on her slender shoulder. “That
wasn’t fun, but every step we take gets us closer. It shouldn’t be long now.”

“Mace...?” the girl started, but then she gasped and snapped her head
excitedly from side to side.

She didn’t have to say it. As Mason’s vision finally cleared, he could
only figure that God must be looking down from on high, busting a holy gut.

CHAPTER

XIX

It wasn’t an alley, but the road behind the theatre was so narrow that it might
as well have been. Directly across the way was the white granite facade of the
Court of Appeals building, taking up the whole side of the road from there to
7th Street like a massive stone bulwark. In the other direction, two and three-
story buildings on both sides enclosed the narrow road all the way to 6th
Street. And from both ends, swarms of creepers poured in like water through
a funnel.

Wordlessly, Mason took Mackenzie by the hand and sprinted toward the
only possible exit, a narrow parking strip running perpendicular to the alley
along the east side of the courthouse. Two police cars and a sheriff’s van had
been abandoned at the far end, but they did nothing to constrict the handful of
creepers coming up from Mission Street. Then, even as Mason considered
whether or not he’d be able to barrel his way through, a big muscle-bound
wilder broke through the slow-moving creepers and charged headlong up the
parking strip, snarling like a rabid dog. At any other time, the sight of such a
massive creature would have had Mason spinning them both around and
fleeing in the opposite direction, but with two separate swarms already
converging at their backs, it was as if they were suddenly caught between a
great white shark and a school of hungry piranha.

The courthouse blocked off one side of the parking strip, but on the other
side was a wide-open parking lot. There would be plenty of room to
maneuver there, but a high fence stood in the way, and there was no way he’d
be able to get them both over safely in the few seconds they had before the
wilder was on them. Hemmed in on all sides then, Mason held his ground,
watched the wilder charge closer and closer, and took a precious fraction of a
second to do the math.

The wilder was big. Thick arms. Strong back. The big dog on the block.

A feint with his weapon wouldn’t do it this time. This fight was going to be a
tough one, and worse, it was going to take time. Time they didn’t have.
Seeing no other way out, he reluctantly pulled the gun from his waistband,
took careful aim, and fired once. The top of the wilder’s head erupted in a
fountain of red, and the horrible creature tumbled to the ground in an ugly
sprawl, but as he’d expected, that single gunshot out in the open resounded
like the blast of a cannon. It echoed off of the surrounding buildings and
rippled away in all directions like rolling thunder, and before he even had the
pistol tucked back in his waistband, Mackenzie stiffened and drew in a sharp
breath.

“Mace...”

“I know, Mack.”

He could already hear it. A rush of footsteps from behind. More wilders,
tearing through the swarm. Then yet another appeared at the far end of the
parking strip, and Mason lit into a silent string of curses, all directed at
himself.

He tossed his cast iron club over the fence and quickly gathered
Mackenzie in his arms.

“We’re gonna climb a fence, Mack.”

“Okay,” she said without hesitation.

Mason hoisted her halfway up the fence and guided her hand to the right
spot.

“Grab hold, Mack. Now lift your foot a bit. Two more inches and you’ll
feel it. There. Got it?”

“Got it, Mace,” she said nervously.

“Hold on tight. I’ll have to climb over first.”

The girl was only half-joking when she told him, “Just don’t forget me,
Mace,” then she clung to the fence like a baby chimp to its mother and
breathed in shallow little gasps.

The fence was all vertical spikes and horizontal supports, so it wasn’t
difficult for an active person to climb, but some city planner had decided to
leave the top ends of the metal spikes exposed to discourage such antics. As

such, since Mason couldn’t simply perch on top and lift Mackenzie the rest of
the way, he had to find a barely sufficient foothold on a horizontal slat and
lean precariously down over that row of sharp spikes to reach her.

“Give me your hand, Mack,” he hushed, one eye on a wilder raging up
the parking strip and his ear tuned to the chorus of growls closing in from the
other side. “Let go with your left hand and reach up. That’s it, Mack, just a
bit higher...”

He stretched his body as far as he could and finally felt her hand in his.
“Gotcha!” he whooped, then he hauled her high into the air, craned her up
and over the top of the spikes, and lowered her gently to the ground. Once
she was safely alit, he jumped down beside her, took hold of her hand,
collected his weapon from the ground, and sprinted across the big, wide
parking lot. At the same instant, another wilder burst into the far end of the
lot, but Mason navigated the space expertly enough that the creature was
soon trapped in a corner behind a row of parked cars. The thing growled and
thrashed and clawed at the metal barrier, but they swiftly put it behind them
as they hurried to the exit.

They had just passed the attendant’s booth and stepped onto the Mission
Street sidewalk when Mason’s attention was drawn to the intersection a
dozen yards away to the west. Apparently, sometime during the bedlam of
the city tearing itself apart, a big 18-wheeler had tried to circumvent one
nightmare or another on 7th Street by attempting a right turn onto this side
road. But the turn had been two tight and the trailer too long, and now the
huge vehicle rested across the entire four-lane road, with its grill buried in the
flanks of a minivan parked against the curb, the back end of the trailer pinned
against the Isabel Hotel on the opposite corner, and two tiny vehicles wedged
tightly under the trailer. One of the cars was empty. The other, not nearly so.

A loose swarm of creepers was approaching from the east, so Mason ran
Mackenzie toward the landlocked truck. As they tore past the courthouse, he
saw that the creepers from the alley and those creatures in the parking strip
had merged into one truly massive swarm, and now it poured out onto
Mission Street in a flood. He caught sight of more than a few wilders in the
midst of the swarm, fighting their way through the ranks of slow-moving
creepers, and he knew that they only had one chance. He headed straight for
the abandoned truck, thinking that they could scamper under the trailer and

leave at least some of the swarm behind, but then he saw the driver’s door of
the big cab hanging open and he did the math on the fly.

The door was emblazoned with a company logo. A fleet vehicle, then.
Mason had known many a trucker in his day, so he understood the difference.
An owner/operator was heavily invested in his ride and would protect it like a
child. A fleet driver was paid by the load and had no financial commitment to
the truck itself. So, once this fleet driver managed to get his rig permanently
wedged, he had abandoned the thing entirely and run for his life. Fair enough,
what with the world coming apart at the seams and all, but a bigger issue
remained. What about the keys? It was such a natural thing for a person to
remove the keys from an ignition and slip them into a pocket without
thinking, but what about a fleet driver? And more to the point, what about a
fleet driver in fear for his very life?

“This way, Mack,” he hushed, and raced the girl right up to the open
door.

He peered in and saw a keyfob dangling from the ignition.

Halle-fuckin’-lujah!

He let go of Mackenzie, propped his weapon in her hand, pulled his
pistol, and jumped into the cab. He took a quick peek in the sleeper
compartment, then plunked himself down in the driver’s seat and gave the
ignition key a half-turn. When the dashboard lit up, he pumped his fist and
had to fight against shouting for joy. He quickly climbed back down, hoisted
Mackenzie into the cab, and tucked his weapon in the corner as the girl
scampered across the seats.

The swarm was close. A dozen yards. It would be tight, but the math was
inarguable. The potential benefits of this crazy idea was well worth the risk.

“Back in a second, Mack,” he called up to her, then he ran around behind
the cab and scurried under the trailer.

The wilder family stuck in the Prius howled and raged, but Mason
ignored them all and quickly located an L-shaped handle connected to the
fifth wheel. He gave it a sharp pull and there was a heavy ke-chunk! as a pair
of metal jaws retracted, but then a quartet of creeper legs appeared at the side
of the truck with hundreds more close behind.

Christ! Move, Mace, move!

He scampered out from under the trailer, kicked the legs out from one of
the creepers and shouldered the other aside, then he hustled to the cab, threw
himself in, and slammed the door shut mere inches ahead of a slew of raking
claws.

He mopped sweat from his brow with his sleeve and turned to see
Mackenzie sitting cross-legged on the passenger’s seat, seat belt already
fastened and looking as cool as could be.

“All good, Mace?” she asked almost casually.

Mason slid the knapsack off of his back and dropped it to the floor
between the seats, then he took a moment to catch his breath.

“I’ll let you know in a second,” he panted.

With the swarm quickly closing in, he said a silent prayer and turned the
ignition key. There was the briefest of hesitations that seemed to last an
eternity, but then the engine roared to life, sending clouds of black smoke
high in the sky. Mackenzie immediately let loose with a raucous cheer, but
Mason waited until the powerful diesel motor settled into a throaty rumble
before finally releasing a heavy sigh.

“Okay. All good, Mack.”

He put the big truck into gear and stepped on the accelerator. The rumble
rose back to a roar and smoke belched from the stacks, but the big truck only
shuddered in place. He put his foot to the floor and the roar became a howl,
and finally the vehicle began creeping forward, inch by laborious inch,
burying its nose deeper and deeper into the side of the minivan. At last, with
a horrible screeching of metal on metal, the cab pulled free from the trailer,
and as the nose of the trailer dropped to the ground with a thunderous crash,
the cab leapt forward with such force that the minivan was flipped on its side
and shoved onto the sidewalk amid a shower of sparks. The truck followed,
slamming the vehicle against the solid granite side of the courthouse, but then
Mason cranked the wheel hard over and turned the sidewalk into his own
personal driving lane.

He plowed over more creepers than he could count before bumping back
down to the road, then he saw a little VW abandoned just where it shouldn’t

be, and didn’t even bother to steer around it. He barreled directly into the
vehicle and sent it flying off to the side where it bowled over several more
creepers before smashing through a pair of glass doors and directly into the
lobby of the Isabel Hotel.

Mackenzie cheered again, and this time Mason joined in, loudly,
raucously, and jubilantly. They cheered and they whooped and they punched
the air as one creature after another disappeared under the big truck’s wheels.
Then there came a thud against the passenger door, and the excitement was
quickly doused as a bloody hand reached up and left a ruddy stain on the
window before it was swept away. Mackenzie jumped in her seat, but she
quickly collected herself and groped along the inside of the door, swiftly
locating the door lock and flipping it closed.

She settled low in her seat and admitted sheepishly, “I didn’t hear it
coming.”

Mason shrugged and told her honestly, “That’s alright, Mack. I knew it
would be a trade-off. A vehicle gives protection, but it also makes noise.” He
spared a moment’s thought to the yahoos in the oversized, little-dick monster
truck and the good ol’ boy with the hole in his pants, then he dismissed them
entirely. “This big rig makes a lot of noise, but it also gives us a lot of
protection. We’re way up high, we’re wrapped in two tons of solid Dee-troit
steel, and we can go over or through all kinds of things that would stop a
smaller vehicle. Believe me, kiddo, we’re doing good.”

He managed to avoid the main body of the swarm as he drove on, but he
couldn’t avoid them all. One after another, the horrid creatures crumpled like
old newspapers and disappeared from view, but aside from the slightest of
bumps and the occasional skid as if they’d somehow hit a patch of black ice,
the truck took it all in stride.

Mackenzie nervously rechecked the door lock and cinched her seat belt
tight.

“I guess so.”

A wilder suddenly charged out from an open doorway, and Mason had a
quick glimpse of swirling gray hair, a frumpy dress hanging in tatters, and a
single pendulous breast painted red with blood. He goosed the accelerator
just enough to avoid contact, then watched in his mirror as the thing that had

once been someone’s grandmother howled and flailed and turned to pursue
them in a limping run.

“I know so,” he insisted. “We have a full tank of fuel, a sleeper cab with
a bed, and I think I even saw a little fridge back there. We won the lottery,
Mack! Lookie here, we even have tunes!”

He fiddled with the stereo and finally got it turned on, but all that came
through was a hiss. He switched to the CD setting, heard some wailing and a
badly strummed guitar issuing from the speakers, and he quickly thumbed it
off.

“What is it with truckers and country music?” he lamented in an overly
dramatic sigh, bringing a giggle from Mackenzie giggled. He switched back
to the radio and swept up and down the AM dial, but the speakers only
hissed. He stabbed the FM button and tried again, then he switched the thing
off completely.

“Oh well, if you absolutely need music, I guess I can listen to country if
I have to,” he fake-grumbled. “But once they start up about their pickup and
their gal and their old hound dog, I might just have to yodel along. And
believe me, nobody needs that!”

This time, Mackenzie laughed aloud. It was a genuine laugh that made
Mason almost forget the old wilder hobbling after them and the swarm
growing in their wake. As they drove, more and more appeared from unseen
crannies along both sides, but these new arrivals quickly fell behind even at
the slow crawl Mason had set for the truck. By now, there may have been a
hundred or more behind them, and Mason couldn’t help but watch his mirrors
in fascination. As he’d already seen, the individuals might be clumsy and
slow, but the swarm itself moved with surprising fluidity. New members
were absorbed into the body of the swarm as seamlessly as the runoff from a
field might trickle into a river, and the whole surged on. It diverted around
obstacles, and gushed through bottlenecks, then it poured together again, and
on it flowed in a constant, relentless torrent.

The old gal in the frumpy dress was still coming, clawing and shoving
and barging her way through the swarm at a swift hobble, but she was
quickly overtaken by a dozen or more younger, stronger wilders. And they
weren’t alone. By now, the swarm had doubled in size and was now a mixed

bag of dead and undead. Some creepers fell away under the onslaught from
the wilders, but they either staggered back to their feet quickly or were
trampled to dust and replaced by others with no loss of momentum to the
whole. But then, even with the creatures right on their tail, Mason suddenly
stomped on the brakes and brought the truck to a screeching halt.

He cast his eyes briefly heavenward, almost imagining that he could hear
laughter, then he looked back to the road ahead with a heavy sigh.

The street was blocked from one side to the other. Apparently, everyone
who had tried to escape during the panic had made for the highway. Perhaps
not the worst of plans under ordinary circumstances, but ridiculous in the
extreme when everyone else in a big city had the same idea. Once committed,
all it would have taken was one. One idiot running out of gas, or one dumb
punk trying to bully his way through. In this case, it looked to have been the
latter, for in the middle of the intersection, an ambulance had been t-boned by
a muscle car and shoved onto its side. The accident was no big thing in itself,
but a few hundred frightened drivers had then tried to force their way around
the obstruction, and they’d turned what should have been a minor hindrance
into a first-class clusterfuck.

In the midst of the confusion, a young female creeper was stumbling
around in a little space between several abandoned vehicles, idly bumping
from one to another like a fly trapped under a bell jar. That little patch of
ground would always belong to her, but she wasn’t the only one who would
never leave this place. A young male in a shiny new Toyota was howling and
wildly flailing its arms through an open window, held in place by a seat belt
it would never be able to comprehend. Beyond the Toyota was an old couple
in a Cadillac, both pawing listlessly at closed windows and gaping blindly at
the rumbling, idling truck. Closer to the nearer side of the logjam was a van
wedged firmly between two cars. Inside the van, a pint-sized wilder
rampaged from the front of the vehicle to the rear and back again like an
insane monkey, alternatively clawing at the windows and clambering over the
things that used to be its family. One tiny girl still occupied her mother’s lap
in the front seat, but when she finally turned toward the sound of the truck, it
was with empty eye sockets, a face stripped almost entirely of flesh, and one
bloody, skeletal hand pawing uselessly at the air.

Mason choked back the taste of vomit and looked to Mackenzie. He

couldn’t help but acknowledge the most fleeting image of his greatest fear,
but the girl happened to turn his way just then, and the sight of those big
green eyes and that perfect, angelic face gave him solace. He leaned across
and touched her gently on the elbow, and whether she sensed a need in him
or was seeing to one of her own, she immediately reached out to take his
hand.

“Why did we stop, Mace?”

A thump from behind returned Mason’s attention to his mirror. Sure
enough, a wilder the size of a bear caught up and was presently clawing its
way up the side of the truck toward Mason’s door. The next closest was
twenty yards back, leading the rest of the swarm like a raging, snarling Pied
Piper.

“The road’s blocked,” he told Mackenzie, calmly.

“Can we turn around?”

Mason wondered how many bodies he’d have to drive over on a return
trip, and imagined with crystal clarity the sights and sounds that would
accompany such a journey.

“I’d rather not,” he said honestly. “Besides, I’m not sure we’d be able to
get around the trailer I dumped in the road. But I think I can make a hole this
way.”

Mackenzie followed the noise of the wilder banging along the side of the
truck, then she bent an ear to the shuffling of a hundred feet rising up out of
the background. She gave a little shudder, but she kept her fears to herself
and nodded warily.

“Okay then.”

Mason ignored the creature clawing at his window and sat there for a
long moment, analyzing the clusterfuck and doing the math. His first instinct
was to back away and come at it with speed to try to ram his way through,
but that would be a fool’s errand. There were times to pound with a
sledgehammer, and times to tickle with a feather.

Two cars were lodged tight against a building on the southwest corner. A
shiny new Nissan, and a boxy Volvo station wagon, both stuck in place by an
old Ford pickup. Obviously, the driver of the pickup had tried to barrel his

way through, but he had woefully overestimated his vehicle’s power and his
own limitations. All he’d done was shove one car into the other, pile them up
and over the sidewalk, and wedge them into the building. But where the
pickup had failed, Mason saw opportunity. He was able to look down upon
the scene with a clarity no one at ground level would have had, and he had
more horses under his hood than the entire US Cavalry. The Nissan was at a
bit of an angle with its wheels turned into the road, and where the front
bumper of the Volvo had impacted the corner of the structure, stucco
cladding had been knocked loose to expose brittle old bricks beneath.

“I think I see a way through, Mack,” he said guardedly, giving her hand
a quick squeeze before releasing it. “It might get bumpy, so you’d better
hang on.”

Mackenzie cinched up her seat belt and grabbed hold of it in her tight
little hands, then something banged against her side of the truck, and her back
stiffened. At last, she turned to Mason, nodded once and told him calmly,
“Okay, Mace.”

The leading edge of the swarm finally arrived and began to flow around
them like a river around a boulder. Mason crawled the truck forward,
crumpling two creepers under his wheels, then he swung hard over to get
behind the pickup, and two more creatures disappeared. He paused only long
enough to pull himself up and peer over the hood to make certain of his
positioning, but the old wilder in the frumpy dress used precisely those
briefest of moments to stumble around the side of the truck and step directly
out in front. Mason pulled forward again, fully expecting her to crumple
away like the others, but instead she clawed furiously at the metal behemoth
and began to actually clamber up and over the front bumper. Her bloody face
appeared over the level of the hood, snarling and spitting fury, but then she
slipped and smacked her head sharply on the hood. She slumped back and
threatened to fall, but she somehow managed to get a leg caught between
bumper and grill, and there she remained, clinging to the front of the truck
like a grisly hood ornament and howling like a banshee.

Mason ignored the flailing creature and crept the truck forward until its
front bumper met the rear of the pickup. There was a horrible crunching
sound as the old wilder’s legs were crushed, and she had just enough time to
let out one last feral howl before dropping out of sight.

Mason threaded the gas pedal until the pickup started to shift on its axles,
then he gave it more and more gas until all three vehicles shook and shivered.
At last, they all gave one violent shudder together, and Mason floored the
accelerator. There was the chirping of tires and the squealing of metal on
metal, but with that massive engine under the big rig’s hood, the outcome
was inevitable. All at once, transmissions failed and brake cables snapped,
and all three vehicles began to move. The Nissan rolled out into the street, the
pickup rammed into the back of the Volvo, and fresh bits of crumbling brick
cascaded onto the vehicle’s hood. Mason backed away a few feet and called
out a caution to Mackenzie over the roar of the swarm.

“Hold on tight, Mack!”

The girl redoubled her grip on the seatbelt, and with that, Mason put the
truck back into gear and floored the accelerator. There wasn’t time and space
to build up much speed, but the sheer mass of the truck delivered such a
tremendous amount of force that the pickup crumpled into the Volvo and
launched both of them forward. The corner of the wall shattered to dust as the
Volvo broke through and shot into the road, then Mason shoved the pickup
after it as he bounced the big rig up and over the sidewalk. The big metal
bumper took an even bigger bite out of the wall, causing dust to swirl and
broken fragments of brick to rain down onto the hood, then the truck bumped
back down to the roadway and directly into the clusterfuck. Mason deftly
skirted around the ambulance and shoved aside the little Toyota with the
young wilder still flailing through the window, then he shouldered his way
between two smaller hatchbacks, bounced up and over the sidewalk on the far
side, and watched the roadblock recede in his mirror.

Once the truck found smooth pavement again, Mackenzie pumped her
tiny fists in the air.

“Yes, yes, yes! I knew you’d do it!” she hooted through a wide grin.

A rotund little wilder staggered out from nowhere, dragging a broken
foot behind, but Mason steered deftly around it.

“Was there ever any doubt?” he fake-boasted.

Mackenzie shook her head and smiled sweetly.

“Never, Mace. Never ever!”

“Really?” he asked, browse raised. “I wish I had your confidence in my
abilities.”

The girl giggled warmly.

“I trust you, Mace. I know you’ll do anything to keep me safe.”

“You know it, Mack,” he told her, doing his best to ignore the way the
tape binding the failsafe to his ankle pulled at his skin as he worked the
pedals. “You know I’ll do anything at all.”

CHAPTER

XX

After they passed the gothic facade of the San Francisco Chronicle building,
Mason wheeled the truck south and looked to the sun arcing low in the
western sky. Less than an hour of daylight remained, but no matter.
According to the map in his head, it was only a mile and a bit to Mission Bay.
It was less likely to be a finish line than the completion of a single leg of a
marathon, but at least they were almost there, so his promise was nearly
fulfilled.

But once they got to the meeting place, what then? If Sarah was there,
standing in the middle of the park, waving her arms and holding up a big
neon sign, all well and good. But what if she hadn’t made it out of the
hospital? Or what if she’d made it out but hadn’t seen the message scrawled
on the wall? Worse yet, what if she had somehow accomplished both and got
herself killed on the way to the park? If she wasn’t waiting there with a neon
sign, obviously Mackenzie would insist they wait for her, but for how long?
Mason knew that the odds of Sarah still being alive were remote at best, but
what would it take for Mackenzie to give up hope? Days? Weeks? Would she
ever give up hope?

His mood darkened by degrees as he contemplated all possible futures,
and it wasn’t hard to figure out why. Every thought of Mackenzie’s future
was always soured by a ponderous heaviness in his heart. The fact was, they
wouldn’t have to wait for weeks. Even thinking in days was being far too
optimistic.

As Mackenzie sat cross-legged beside him, munching on an orange,
Mason reached into the bag and helped himself to one of the few bottles of
beer he’d managed to rescue from the restaurant. He popped the cap, downed
half of it in a single swallow, and set the bottle in a cup holder built into the
console.

Mackenzie sniffed the air.

“Is that beer?”

“It is,” he told her unapologetically.

Her face screwed up into a scowl, and she glared at him.

“That does it. I’m calling the cops,” she said, then made a display of
rummaging through her pockets for a non-existent cellphone.

Mason fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. At least for a second or two.
Then the silliness of it appeared in a broad smile across the girl’s lips, and
despite how dark his thoughts had become, he threw his head back and roared
with laughter. Mackenzie giggled coyly, hands over her mouth and cheeks in
a blush, but the pretense quickly disappeared and she erupted in a genuine,
uncontrollable fit of laughter.

It wasn’t to last, though. An audible hiss rose up, and a woman’s voice
came out of nowhere, immediately stifling the laughter.

“Tom?”

That was it. One word. The voice was nonthreatening, benign even, but it
came so unexpectedly out of the blue that it made both of them jump.
Mackenzie uttered a gasp and shrunk back into her seat, and Mason stomped
on the brakes to bring the truck to a stop. He whipped out his pistol and
swung bodily around toward the sleeper berth, every nerve in a tingle, but he
saw nothing. Was it possible that someone could be hiding back there? A
secret compartment under the bed, maybe? No. Impossible. The berth was
small, barely big enough for a single mattress. He craned his neck to see
every square inch of the space, and was quickly satisfied that they were
alone. So where...?

Then he heard it again. A click, a hiss, and a woman’s voice repeating
that same single word.

“Tom?”

At last he understood, and he tucked the pistol away with a sigh.

“It’s okay, Mack. It’s just the radio.” He reached to turn up the volume.
“If someone’s still on the air, maybe things ain’t as bad as we thought. It
takes power to send out a radio signal, so maybe ...”

He cut himself off mid-sentence. The radio was off. He’d turned it off
himself. So, how could...

“Tom, are you there?”

Of course. This was a truck. Trucks had CB radios. He quickly located
the unit hanging under the dashboard with its microphone clipped to its side.

“It’s the CB, Mack. It’s like a built-in walkie-talkie.”

“I know what a CB is,” Mackenzie snorted, then her tone grew wistful.
“She sounds scared.”

Mason couldn’t disagree.

“Tom, please come in. Please?”

The voice was shaky. Like Becks’ when she’d left that last message. The
woman was scared, sure, but more than that. She was crying. Barely holding
it together.

“Are you going to answer?” Mackenzie asked.

Mason shrugged, “She’s not calling us.”

“Maybe you should answer anyway.”

“What would be the point?” he asked, trying his best to sound
indifferent.

“She’s scared, Mace.”

He shrugged again.

“And what could I possibly say that would make her any less scared?”

“Dunno. Maybe just hearing someone else’s voice would help. “

He regarded the girl and saw her sitting bolt-upright, her eyes wide,
expectant, maybe even hopeful. She may have been talking about the faceless
voice on the radio, but she was projecting herself into the equation. And not
surprisingly, he had to admit. Even a man as pragmatic as Mason had to
acknowledge a certain comfort in knowing that the two of them weren’t
utterly alone in the world.

He looked out and saw half a dozen creepers ambling their way, then he
grudgingly reached for the microphone. After a prolonged pause, he thumbed

the key and uttered an almost timid, “Hello?”

Immediately, the radio hissed and the voice returned, but now it sounded
relieved and excited.

“Tom? Tom, is that you?”

That was exactly what he’d been afraid of. Suddenly, he wished he’d left
bad enough alone.

Reluctantly, he keyed the microphone again.

“No, this isn’t Tom,” he said, then he added with genuine regret, “I’m
sorry.”

There was a long pause, then a hiss, then the woman’s voice, shaky
again.

“Is he okay?” the woman asked warily, “Is he...” then her words
dissolved into a prolonged hiss, and the radio went dead.

Mason keyed the microphone and spoke gently.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who Tom is. We just found a truck and it had
keys in it, so we took it.”

Another pause. Longer this time. Then the radio hissed again.

“A Kenworth?” the woman managed weakly, like someone not wanting
to hear the answer, “White over red?”

“No!” Mason told her eagerly, “It’s blue. And I think it’s a Peterbilt.”

He keyed off the mike and waited anxiously. Then, after another
pregnant pause, he began to wonder if he’d said something wrong after all.
He certainly hadn’t expected cheers of joy from the woman, but neither had
he expected silence. In fact, the radio stayed quiet for so long that he
wondered if she was going to answer at all. Was she gone? Was she so in
tears that she couldn’t respond? Suddenly, he understood that what
Mackenzie said about hearing another person’s voice was right on the money.
Whether he was willing to admit it or not, he wanted nothing more right then
and there than for that unknown, faceless woman to say something. Anything.

Even as he pondered what he could possibly say to make her respond, or
if he should bother saying anything at all, he felt Mackenzie’s hand on his.

She took the microphone gently away from him, then she leaned into it and
keyed the button.

“Hello?” she said softly, “Hello? Are you still there?”

Several long seconds passed, then there came a click and a prolonged
hiss. Finally, when the voice returned, it was weak and quivering, but the
tone was tender, like that of a loving mother.

“Yes, I’m still here.” There was a sniffle and a barely disguised clearing
of a throat. “Who is this?”

“My name’s Mackenzie. What’s yours?”

It was as if the girl was speaking to an old friend, and Mason could only
sit back in awe. From anyone else, the tone might have come across as
sounding disingenuous. From Mackenzie, it sounded as genuine as a hug.

The woman at the other end must have agreed, for her voice was steady
now, and so soft and gentle that Mason could almost hear her smiling.

“That’s a pretty name. My name’s Christine. How old are you,
Mackenzie?”

“I’m ten,” the girl chirped excitedly. “Almost ten and a half!”

“Wow, ten and a half. No wonder you sound so grown up.”

Mackenzie giggled into the mike and asked casually, “Do you have kids
my age?”

Now the pause was so prolonged that Mason truly thought that the
conversation was at an end. His heart went out to this faceless woman mired
in grief, and to the sweet little girl who was just trying to reach out. He
looked out at the dead things stutter-stepping toward them and let loose a
heavy sigh. Silently then, he cursed the creepers, cursed the world, and
cursed whatever malicious god it was that would throw such sweet, gentle
souls into such a nightmare world.

Just as he’d made up his mind that the woman was gone for good, there
was a crackle of static, and a tenuous voice came back barely above a
whisper.

“No, sweetie. I don’t have children.”

There was a click, and Mason knew that she’d cut herself off.

Any more... That’s what she almost said... I don’t have kids any more...
Bless you for not saying it, Christine.

“Oh,” Mackenzie said disappointedly, then she shrugged it off and was
back to her normal chirpy self. “My aunt Sarah says she never wanted kids,
but she can’t imagine what her life would be like without me. Then she gives
me ‘the look’ and says, “Well I can imagine sometimes.”

The woman faked a few strained chuckles.

“Aunt Sarah sounds great,” she said, and though the mike stayed open,
nothing else came through but a hiss.

Mackenzie looked confused by the silence, but Mason understood
immediately. The woman wasn’t thinking of what to say next, she was
thinking of what not to say. Someone else might have blundered on with Is
Aunt Sarah with you? or I’d like to meet Aunt Sarah one day, or the worst
thing imaginable, What about your mother? Not this woman, though. Bless
her soul.

At last, she spoke again, but her tone had changed.

“Mackenzie, are you somewhere safe? Is someone looking out for you?”

The girl smiled brightly.

“Oh, I’m safe, alright. I’m with Mace!”

Mason smiled, and Mackenzie smiled back.

“I’m glad to hear it, sweetie. And Mace is taking good care of you?”

Again, the careful selection of words. Clearly this ‘Mace’ wasn’t her
father, but it wasn’t ‘Uncle Mace’ either. It was just Mace. If Mackenzie was
in any kind of trouble, this woman wanted to know, and Mason had no doubt
that she’d move heaven and Earth to find this ‘Mace’ guy and kick his ass
from here to Timbuktu.

Good for you, Christine... he thought, doffing an imaginary cap to this
unknown woman caring about a child she’d never met and would never live
to know. Good for you...

Mackenzie looked at the floor, her cheeks blushing adorably.

“I trust Mace. He’s not my dad, but he kind of is.”

Mason felt a tear forming in the corner of his eye and turned back to the
side window. The sight of the dead things closing in on the truck took his
mind off of his melting heart, but it didn’t last long.

The radio crackled again.

“Where are you, Mackenzie?”

The girl looked to Mason for an answer, but he hesitated. Should he lie?
He didn’t mind this unknown woman knowing their location, but anyone else
with a working radio would know it too. But was there anyone else? And
perhaps more importantly, if he lied to keep their location a secret, would it
count as lying to Mackenzie? Ultimately, he coached the girl word by word
so she could explain it all clearly.

Mackenzie echoed his whispered prompts, “We’re in... What, Mace?
Oh... SoMa... heading, uh, south to... uh, Mission Creek.” Then she added her
own words with genuine excitement, “We’re going to meet Sarah!”

“That’s good to hear, sweetie,” the voice said, then it started to quiver,
“I hope you find her, and I hope you can all get away from here, safe and
sound.”

The radio keyed off abruptly. The woman was crying again, but she
didn’t want this anonymous child to hear it, and all Mason could think was,
You’re incredible, Christine. I wish I’d known you...

“Where are you?” Mackenzie asked into the mike. “Are you close by?
Maybe we could come there after we meet Sarah. We have oranges!”

A long pause, then, “Oh sweetie, oranges sound great, but I’m all the
way up in North Beach.” The voice started to waver, but it held together long
enough to add, “Actually, I’m surprised you can hear me from so far away. I
guess someone wanted us to be able to talk, huh?”

“I guess,” Mackenzie shrugged. “Who’s Tom? Is that your husband?”

More silence as the woman swept away tears, then the voice came back,
strong and clear.

“Yes, sweetie, he is. He drives a truck. He put a radio in our home so
whenever he gets close enough, we can talk and talk and talk.” There was

nothing but static for several seconds, then an almost plaintive, “I haven’t
heard from him for a while, so I’m just a little worried.”

Mason heard a thud against the door of the truck and looked to see a
bloody handprint on his window. A wilder. With the truck rumbling away
like slow thunder, this would be the first of what was bound to be many.

He turned to Mackenzie and told her, reluctantly, “We have to move,
kiddo.”

He shifted into gear and pulled the truck forward.

“Maybe Tom’s just hiding and can’t hear you,” he heard the girl say.
“Mace and I hid all the time until we found this truck. I bet that’s it. I bet
Tom’s just hiding.”

The big rig edged forward, crushing three creepers under the wheels. Just
in time to hide the horrific sounds of bones coming apart and bodies
exploding like oversized packets of ketchup, the radio crackled again.

“You’re probably right, Mackenzie. He’s probably just hiding. He was
always the king of hide-and-seek.”

Damn. The woman was crying again. Tom was the king of hide-and-
seek. Was. Past tense. Past tense for the husband on whom she was about to
give up, and for the kids who were already gone. God damn this world to
Hell.

He was thankful that Mackenzie couldn’t see the dark melancholy that
was his own default setting, and as she keyed the mike and filled the cab with
her sweet, cheerful voice, he almost hoped she never would.

“Tom sounds nice,” she said. “Maybe once he gets home, you can come
to where we are.”

“That sounds wonderful,” the woman managed, then the microphone
was keyed off abruptly. After enough time for her to wipe her eyes and clear
her throat, there was another click, and her voice returned, clear and warm.
“I’m glad I got the chance to talk to you, Mackenzie. And Mace, whoever
you are, you take care of that special little girl.”

Whoever you are. With those three words, the woman summed up the
entire exchange. They knew each other’s names, but nothing else. As far as

Mason knew, this woman could be anyone. She could be white, black,
Hispanic or Asian. She could be a teacher, an artist, a firefighter, or a full-
time mother. She could be the young cutie he’d passed a few weeks ago
who’d flashed a smile bright enough to put a spring in his step for the rest of
the day, or the waitress with the overbite who’d brought him his pie and
coffee and sketched a little happy face on the back of his bill. She could be
the girl he’d yelled at for cutting him off in traffic, or the cashier at the
grocery store who’d declined his credit card. She could be a complete
stranger he’d never meet in a million years, or the daughter or niece or best
friend of someone he’d known since childhood. But whatever else she was,
of one thing he was certain. This faceless woman was someone’s mother,
someone’s wife, and someone’s daughter. She was someone’s friend,
someone’s confidante and someone else’s worst nightmare. She was nobody,
and she was everybody, all at once. And with that sudden realization, his
heart grew ponderously heavy again.

He’d had every intention of letting Mackenzie conclude the conversation
without any input from him, but the girl suddenly leaned into him, held the
mike up to his lips and keyed it, and he suddenly had no choice.

“Uh, of course,” he managed, caught off-guard at first and not knowing
what else to say. But once he took a moment to collect himself, he was able
to speak loud and clear, and with absolute honesty. “I promise you, Christine,
I will take care of her. Believe me when I say, nothing else in the world is
more important to me than Mackenzie.”

The girl beamed a broad smile, her cheeks reddened perceptibly, and she
unclipped her seatbelt so she could climb over the seats and grace Mason’s
cheek with a kiss as light as the touch of a butterfly. Then she sat back down,
held the mike to her own mouth, and kept her eyes aimed directly at Mason
as she added sweetly, “Don’t worry, Christine. Mace is the nicest man I’ve
ever known.”

Mason pulled the truck to a stop just short of the I-80 overpass, just in
case it somehow interfered with the signal. Even as creepers appeared out of
nowhere and the bloody-handed wilder came charging up from behind, he
stayed put. Whatever else he accomplished this day, he was going to let the
conversation end only when it had to.

“Good luck to both of you,” the faceless everywoman said plaintively.

“Good luck, and God bless you both...”

And good luck to you too, Christine, Mason thought to himself, thankful
that Mackenzie didn’t pass him the mike so he’d have to say the words out
loud. But I’d rather do without the blessing of a God that would do this,
thanks all the same...

“Good luck to you, too!” Mackenzie said happily enough, but then it
must have dawned on her that this would probably be the last she would ever
hear from her new long-distance friend. She sounded almost disheartened
when she tacked on, “It was nice talking to you, Christine.”

“It was my pleasure, sweetie,” the voice came through again, so softly
that it was barely discernible over the crackling static. “I hope you have a
good, long, happy life.”

“‘Kay, you too,” Mackenzie replied, awkwardly.

“Goodbye, you precious little angel.”

The voice was almost gone now, lost in static and overcome by the
woman’s own tears.

Mackenzie keyed the mike one last time, managed a clumsy, “‘Kay...
Bye, Christine,” and then both she and the radio fell silent.

Mason started moving again, but the girl didn’t even notice. She simply
sat there, cross-legged on her seat with the microphone clutched to her chest.
There may have been a tear, but it was difficult to tell. He wheeled west onto
Bryant in order to scoot back to 7th Street, and was forced to steer hard right
and then deke left to get around an old accident littered with bodies. And all
the while, neither of them said anything. At last, after nearly a full minute
passed, Mackenzie suddenly threw the microphone to the floor. It smacked
hard on the floor and snapped back to Mason’s side of the cab, then it
pendulumed at the end of the cord until an equilibrium was reached, and it
hung there like a silent, dead thing.

Mackenzie screwed up her pretty little face into an angry grimace and all
but spat the words, “This sucks!”

The outburst caught Mason by surprise, but it was understandable. After
all, to him, Christine was the girl at the gas station or the woman he’d shared
a smile with in the elevator. But to Mackenzie, she was Aunt Sarah, and she

was Mrs. Dobson, and she was all the other nurses at the Trident Urgent Care
Clinic who would watch over her when Sarah was busy. And whether she
knew it or not, that everywoman was also her mother. The mother she’d
never had the chance to know. The mother who had been taken from her so
long ago that she would never be able to remember her face.

Instead of offering some saccharine attempt at sentimentality, he told her
honestly, “Yes, Mack, it does. It surely does suck,” and left it at that. Being
no stranger to foul moods, he knew better than to try dragging her out by
force. He knew from a lifetime of experience that sometimes one simply had
to wallow in their own misery for a while, like an elephant wallowing in the
mud. Eventually, the self-pity would start to chafe, and Mackenzie would
crawl out on her own, and when she did, she’d be better protected against the
biting insects of disappointment. The best thing he could do right now as a
friend was to wait patiently onshore and offer her a helping hand when she
was ready to emerge.

Sure enough, by the time they turned south onto 7th Street a few minutes
later, Mackenzie had already begun the long slog to dry land. She turned to
Mason and informed him casually, “If you didn’t find me, I’d be dead by
now.”

“Maybe,” he shrugged noncommittally. “But I could say the same
thing.”

The girl snorted.

“Are you kidding? You’re a big, strong man. You’d be better off if you
didn’t have me to worry about.”

Mason had to drive up on the sidewalk to avoid a cluster of abandoned
vehicles, but when he bounced the truck back down to open roadway, he
pulled it to a stop and swung in his seat to give Mackenzie his full attention.

“First of all, Mack, we’re a team,” he told her sincerely, and when she
scoffed, he became even more insistent. “I admit, I might have managed well
enough on my own for a while, but believe me, young lady, it is a whole lot
easier to keep going when you have something to keep going for.”

It didn’t look like she was buying it, but she was too inherently sweet to
contradict him. Instead, she turned to her window and blindly watched the
world outside.

“Sarah’s dead, isn’t she?” she asked coolly.

“I don’t know, Mack,” Mason replied, shaking his head. “But Sarah has
something to live for, too. And she’s smart. And if she has even half of your
determination... Well, I pity anyone or anything that stands in her way.”

Mackenzie pondered the notion for a moment. Then she allowed a
tentative, “I suppose.”

“I know,” Mason declared in no uncertain terms, then he gave the girl a
gentle pat on the knee and started the truck moving again.

A wilder shot out of a side street and came at them, but Mason didn’t
even bother to steer around it. He kept the wheel straight and steady, let the
wilder charge out into the middle of the road, and barreled over it with a wet
thud and a barely noticeable shiver through the chassis of the truck.

“It’s a long way for Sarah to go,” Mackenzie said, dispiritedly.

“It is,” Mason agreed.

“And there’s lots of those things out there. Like, lots!”

“Yes, there are.”

Mackenzie kept her face turned to the side window, and even craned her
neck as if she were actually on the lookout for a familiar face.

“She’s all alone, Mace.”

At last, here was a single point with which Mason could contend, and he
leapt at the opportunity.

“Actually, we don’t know that, do we? In fact, we don’t know anything
at all about her situation. Maybe she’s alone, or maybe she’s with a whole
bunch of people. Maybe she found some group with a safe place to stay, and
a big stack of guns.”

Mackenzie fixed him with a scowl.

“People with guns?” she glowered.

Mason heard his own words coming back to haunt him, and countered
them in like manner.

“Not everyone can be bad, Mack.”

The girl allowed the slightest of smirks to dissolve away one corner of
the scowl.

“I guess.”

The image of the faceless Christine popped back into Mason’s mind, and
his heart ached when he pictured that unknown woman descending into her
own private hell. Then the image of the faceless everywoman faded and
dissipated, and the pixels slowly coalesced back together into a crystal-clear
image of Becks.

“We have to have hope,” he found himself saying aloud. “If we lose
that, we’re done. So if Sarah isn’t there to meet us, all it means is that she
isn’t there yet. We can’t give up hope, Mack. Whatever happens.”

He was telling her what he figured she needed to hear, but it didn’t count
as a lie. Not exactly. The words were from Becks, and though it was the same
sort of idealistic crap as Doc Walker’s lie the day before, it wasn’t
fundamentally untrue. And to her credit, Mackenzie didn’t scoff outright. She
retreated into some kind of internal debate and sat in silence long enough for
Mason to admit to his mental image, Tricky thing, this hope. But I’m trying,
Becks. I’m trying...

At last, Mackenzie nodded, “Okay,” then she turned back to the window
and admitted a little more meekly, “But I sure hope she’s there.”

“So do I, Mack. So do I,” Mason agreed, but his reasons weren’t quite as
selfless as hers. The previous night’s scare was still fresh in his mind, and all
he could think of was that if Sarah was there when he was forced to do to
Mack what he would ultimately have to do, maybe it would make the thing
somehow less devastating. He knew immediately that it wasn’t true, but he
had made no promise not to lie to himself, and if such a thing kept the future
alive for another day or another hour or another minute, he was all right with
that. Maybe it could even be considered a kind of hope, after all.

Baby steps, Becks... he told the image even as it vanished from his
mind’s eye.

Then, he saw railroad tracks paralleling the road and he declared aloud to
Mackenzie, “Well, we’re about to find out real quick, Mack. One way or the
other.”

The massive overhead span of the I-280 signaled their arrival. Mission
Creek Park. The place with the funny dogs.

They were there.

CHAPTER

XXI

Mason wheeled east under the freeway, steered easily around two vehicles
abandoned on the roundabout, and made his own lane across a vast spread of
grass toward the waterfront. He navigated the rolling ground expertly, drove
directly over two staggering creepers without slowing, and soon had the truck
crawling along a paved road running along the water’s edge. They came upon
the actual dog park soon enough, but it was occupied at present by the bodies
of a woman, a German Shepherd, and a pint-sized, bloody-faced wilder that
raged and thrashed against the fence as they trundled slowly past.

But no matter. He hadn’t expected much to begin with, but even his
wildest imaginings didn’t include the erstwhile Aunt Sarah waiting precisely
there to wave them in. He continued on, took the truck as far as he could on
the paved road, then hopped up onto the grass and started a slow circle
around the entire park. He inspected every building and abandoned vehicle
for anything that might constitute a sign of life, but all he saw around them
was death. There were bodies in various states of corruption littering the
grounds, and more creepers than seemed fitting for such an idyllic place, but
he kept the vehicle on course and rolled over corpses and creepers with equal
disregard. There was a distinct hitch in Mackenzie’s breathing with every
encounter, but Mason figured it had more to do with the skidding and slewing
of tires on the resultant sludge than with the impacts itself, so he patted her
knee every time to assure her that all was well. At last, after a complete
circumnavigation of the park, he pulled back onto Channel Street and drew
them slowly to a halt.

“I guess she’s not here, huh?” Mackenzie asked, gloomily.

“Not yet,” Mason replied in as casual a manner as he could. “But we had
a big head start. Tell me, Mack, how close to the dog park were you and
Sarah that day? Were you right beside it, or were you some distance away?”

Mackenzie climbed to her knees and peered through the windshield as if
she might actually be able to see the landscape for herself.

“We were close, but not too close,” she said through an uncertain
grimace. “I remember that we sat on a bench with a tree hanging over it, and
we could see the cars go by on the bridge.”

The bridge? She meant the highway overpass, obviously, but the
overpass was visible all around the park. And a park bench near trees? Hell,
there were trees and benches everywhere!

“Mack, can you tell me anything else? How close to the water where
you? Was there a path? Maybe a building nearby?”

“Ummm....” she closed her eyes, and Mason could see her wracking her
brain. At last, she raised a finger in the air and declared with no uncertainty,
“There was a lamp post to one side, ‘cause both dogs peed on it, and we were
right next to the water, ‘cause I was looking at the houseboats, and I was
wondering what it would be like to live in one. Umm... Oh, yeah! Sarah
brought a few pieces of bread so we could feed the geese, and when we went
down to the water, the houseboat right in front of us was yellow and covered
in glass. Does that help, Mace?”

Mason looked to the string of houseboats attached to a pier running
parallel to the shore, and damned if there wasn’t a yellow one with big
picture windows close to the dog park. He put the truck back into gear, rolled
easily over a slow-moving creeper in a blood-stained negligee, and pulled up
directly in front of the yellow houseboat sitting twenty feet out in the
channel. On this side of the esplanade was a staggered series of benches, but
only one was anywhere near a lamppost.

“I think I found the right place, Mack,” he said, keying off the ignition.

Mackenzie smiled and lowered herself back into her seat.

“I think so too, Mace.”

Despite the girl’s spurious confidence, Mason sat behind the wheel for
some time, checking his mirrors and considering. He could already see
eight... no, nine creepers coming toward them from different directions, but
from their speed and distance, he figured he had a full two minutes of leeway.
He snatched down the truck’s log and accompanying pen from a sleeve