Aaron seemed to be following Ken’s thoughts, unspoken or not. He made a jabbing motion with his good hand. “And they don’t die when you hit ‘em in the head. They go nuts.”
Ken seized on that. Clutched it like a man about to drown, a man grasping crazily for anything that might serve as a lifeline. Even if it meant dragging that thing down to the depths and death right with him.
“That’s right! That means the stories were wrong. So they couldn’t –”
Aaron cut him off. “Misinformation. It won’t kill ‘em, but it cuts off the control of…” and he nodded upward, “… whatever’s controlling ‘em.” He was silent a moment before continuing, “They don’t want us attacking them that way, so they include a bit of over-confidence. Think about it: they say to our minds that all we need to do is hit them with an easy headshot. And the first time we do, we think, ‘Holy shit, don’t do that again.’ Keeps the army intact.”
Ken thought about what did happen with the things when their heads were attacked. “What about that pink and black stuff that comes out? Where are their brains? And how did the ones in the airplane – the dead ones – rise from the dead? Explain that, Aaron.”
He realized he sounded pleading. Realized that was no mistake. His sanity might hang on the reply. The answers Aaron was providing just made everything worse. It was one thing to realize that they had been hit by some hideous virus, a manmade mistake or a natural response to humanity’s long history of cavalier abuse of the planet.
But an attack? An…
… invasion?
That was what it had to be. If the things were doing this, they had to be coming from somewhere above them. Somewhere not of this world. Somewhere alien. And somewhere that didn’t even view the world Ken understood as worthy of anything but extermination.
Ken shuddered, and so did Aaron. Just a small twitch, but the cowboy looked as uncomfortable as he ever had. Any show of discomfort on the other man’s part always scared Ken. The man was a rock; the only time he’d let himself really succumb to emotion was when Dorcas –
(one more lost, just like Derek, just like my boy)
– had nearly died. Then he had been a force of nature, an unstoppable juggernaut. Now, he looked suddenly all-too-human. Just one more primitive cowering in the dark, praying the lightning wouldn’t strike too close.
“Aaron,” Ken whispered, “what does this have to do with Hope and Lizzy? With Derek?” Because even though his boy had been bitten, he had come back. And there was no escaping the fact that even as a zombie his son had been different. Special. Almost revered.
Aaron hesitated.
And in that moment, the train rocked on its wheels. Then again, much harder.
5
Aaron froze. Ken was already immobile, propped against the inside wall of the boxcar. But he tensed. The motion felt stronger than the subtle bounce of train wheels over the seams of steel rails.
It didn’t repeat.
Aaron had been staring upward, an eerie analog to the stare of the zombies that he contended were the advance force of some other threat – perhaps something even worse.
Now he looked back at Ken. And chose to ignore the question that had just been asked. He grabbed Ken’s arm instead. Ken didn’t understand why, until the cowboy felt his forearm, and something burned.
The bite.
So much had happened that Ken had – if not forgotten, then at least buried the fact that he had been bitten by one of the things. A half-circle of scarred flesh where one of the creatures had planted its upper teeth and bitten down hard enough to break the skin only a few days before. A descent through the passenger space of a crashed plane, a hellish walk through an inferno inhabited by the walking dead.
Ken had been bitten. Bitten, but hadn’t turned. Hadn’t Changed.
He might have figured that it was because the thing that bit him had been one of the undead, as opposed to one of the things transformed directly from life to unthinking psychopaths. But no, Dorcas had been bitten by the same things. Bitten while covering the exit of the rest of the group. She had stayed behind, knowing it was the last thing she would do, knowing she would be bitten.
And then she had come back. And stood at Derek’s side. Along with the half-burnt giant who had Changed Ken’s boy.
So the undead things’ bite could cause the Change.
But not in Ken.
Why?
“You’re not special,” said Aaron. “We don’t think so, anyway. And we don’t think it’d be a good idea for you to get fully bitten to test the hypothesis.”
That last word reminded Ken that Aaron was much more than a simple cowboy. He was very, very smart. Something more than the simple ol’ country boy he pretended to be. What exactly, Ken had no idea. Just one more mystery.
Aaron traced the half-circle on Ken’s forearm. “You only got half-bit. We think that’s why you didn’t turn.” He looked at Ken. “We think that what started this all was a transmission. Some kind of radio-or radioactive-like wave that attacked our minds and caused them to change our bodies instantaneously.”