Rise Again Below Zero (58 page)

T
he survivors came back. They wandered through the forest, the badlands, up the canyon in which the river was now a gurgling stream among massive wet rocks and broken trees. The reservoir had drained down to the lowest point of damage in the dam, and now the flow had little passion. People picked their ways along until someone found the train up above on the shelf of rock that bore the tracks. The children were there, walking single file, making slow progress toward Happy Town, unaware there was no longer such a place in the world.

There was a brief and violent interlude as the living humans who had been tending the children were slaughtered by the mob that found them. Their pleas for mercy were ignored; they might be innocent, but they were associated with the Architect. The train engineer was thrown into the river with broken arms. The children looked on. One group was spared—scouts from the Tribe, recognized by some other Tribespeople before they, too, could be torn apart.

“We saw somebody on the dam,” Conn told the posse that had found them. “Bunch of fuckers comin’ after her.”

“Her?”

“Or him. Couldn’t see. Anyhows, we shot them up and then the one they were after blew up the fuel tanks. Then we went after the train.”

For some reason, Conn decided not to identify who he thought had done it.

Then a large party of newly emboldened citizens crossed the sludge on the exposed bottom of the reservoir to the resort island and liberated the children there. The staff who remained at the resort met the same fate as those on the train. None of the infected or undead remained animated.

•   •   •

Twenty-four hours after the flood, several hundred survivors gathered in the badlands in an area where the undead had fallen to the run-out of the flood. It was easy to see where such areas were; the white carpet of new snow had been turned to dark slush in long, broad fingers that extended away from town and drained into the erosion washes of the badlands.
Someone eventually realized radiation might have played a role in the destruction, and after a Geiger counter confirmed the theory, they pulled the encampment back; but away from the taint of radioactivity, the remaining zeroes began to circle.

In the end, they had to gather up any vehicle that would still start and drive away. Several thousand of the living were never seen again. Of some six hundred children collected from the living, four hundred were found, and almost half of these were reunited with some living relative.

“I
t was her,” Amy said.

“It might not have been,” Patrick suggested.

He was tired and miserable from a long day of listening to unhappy kids wailing at the top of their lungs. He wanted a martini. They had water, so he drank that.

Two hundred and fifteen children left over once all family and friends had taken in those they knew. They would need more volunteers to take on parenting, the toughest assignment in the ruined world. Otherwise the search for a safe place would have to continue.

But nobody believed there really was a safe place any longer.

They were staying overnight in the abandoned house where the scouts had set up camp. He, Amy, Maria, and a couple of other old-timers had left town less than four hours before the swarm descended upon Happy Town; now they just wanted to travel forever, as long as it was away from this place.

Gunshots punctuated the silence of the night; there were still scores of moaners in the area who hadn’t been caught in the flood or ventured too close to the hot zone, and a pack of feral hunters was on the move through the wilderness to the north. Huge bonfires lit the night every hundred yards. Most of the unclaimed children were sleeping in vehicles or in tents, patrolled by vigilant survivors, but the Silent Kid was asleep on Amy’s lap, with the little goblin-dog asleep in his, snoring.

“I can’t feel her pain anymore.”

“Oh, come on,” Patrick said. “That’s telepathy.”

“Whatever. She’s not there anymore. I can’t feel her.”

•   •   •

The scouts had told very few people what they’d really seen at the reservoir. They weren’t sure if it would put members of the Tribe in danger or not—a lot of lives had been lost along with the lives saved.

“When Topper didn’t come back, we decided to go fuck the dam up ourselves,” Conn explained. “We was hiding in the rocks waiting for first light. Then we saw this chick come crawling up out of the woods. The zeroes fucked her up but she kept on coming. She fought ’em off. Then—boom.”

That was the entire story, in as much detail as they would ever get. Patrick was certain it must have been Danny. But he resisted Amy’s certainty. He wanted her to enjoy the comfort of
un
certainty. A little ember of hope.

That same day, several ex-Tribespeople had ventured out to the defensive line of Happy Town to see if there was some useful secret there; if they could replicate Happy Town’s security, but not its society, they might yet create a real haven. But when they had found the buckets and their foul contents, mostly dumped into ditches by the acolytes to allow the zero swarm through, it was understood that they would not be using that approach.

That was how they found Topper’s still-animated head.

•   •   •

As more and more of the survivors of Happy Town had arrived over the course of the day, fleeing south, they had been quizzed to determine if they worked for the Architect or not; those who passed muster were put into scouting teams or used as lookouts. The entire sequence of events had been so dense and chaotic it felt like years since yesterday, centuries since the fall of Happy Town.

“Danny’s probably alive and well, up in the hills scalping the last of the child snatchers,” Patrick said.

He took his eyes from the red light of the fireplace and looked Amy in the face. Tears were spilling down her cheeks. He wound an arm around her neck and pulled her close, but said nothing. He’d run out of words of comfort a year back.

Patrick listened to the keening grief that escaped her, a cry of anguish from somewhere so deep inside it didn’t reach her vocal cords. She kept as quiet as she could, sobbing and sobbing until she got hiccups. The Silent
Kid stirred and muttered something in his sleep. Amy stayed where she was, soaking Patrick’s sweater with her tears, until she could breathe again.

Amy’s grief wasn’t just for loved ones lost. It was also for the end of things, the loneliness of life without afterlife. Neither of them believed in anything after death anymore, except the resurrection of the hungry dead.

Amy heaved a mournful sigh, placed a gentle hand on the Silent Kid’s cheek, and said, “Let’s name him Danny.”

S
o thats the store of sherif dany an her braav esploids to defeet th zeros wich ii hav root doun so al mankin wil reemembar hir 4ever. Ii los 2 fingars of mii lef hand same as sherif dany but from frosbiit not from eetin of my oon fingars as dany did wif hir oon fingars. Thats also wen ii got mii naam dany. Aftar that ii wen south wif the triib, an we had manee aventirs agaans the zeros be4 thaa dzeez wipit owt mosly. Ii got a sekand dog a big dog naamit boons wich doktar amy saas is spelt BONES but she spels th ol waa not th nu waa.

My oon chilrin heer th store of sherif dany everbode chilrin heer that store now it is famist th worl arown, but ii nu dany personal so it is difrin wif mee. Al th chilrin bleev sherif dany is stil aliiv 20 yeers arter shi was las seen gooin into th col and iis with her bakpak an wepins. Thay bleev shi stil keeps us saaf from zeros an striids the hils an valees an cant eevin dy shees so badas. But not zeero ii meen shi is imortel.

An ii ges as long as we bleev, it miit jes be tru.

—Dan Cutter, the Silent Kid

Heartfelt thanks are due to many people—particularly my Gallery Books editor, Ed Schlesinger, for making this book possible; Corinne Marrinan Tripp for making
me
possible; the folks at the South Dakota Department of Tourism; Andy Nicastro, Dr. Edward Graham, Amy Davidson, Courts “Buz” Carter, and zombie fans the world over.