In agony, holding my head with both of my hands, I turned to the waiting crowd of zombies. They’d closed most of the gap between us. The ones in front were mere feet from me. I pulled up that other sight within me and somehow saw all the strands of the web and felt every zombie that still resided in the Acres. Most were in front of me but there were others still on the prowl in the park. Though it was agony to do so I managed to pull in all the strands and hold them in my thoughts, my head feeling like it was about to burst open like an egg thrown from the window of a high-rise.
I cried out to them. “Stop! Stop!” Somehow exercised my will on the threads. They all came shakily to a stop before me. I could feel my tenuous grasp on the threads that were their un-lives begin to slip. It was too much and there were too many of them. The feet began to creep forward, millimeters at a time. They’d never stop. I felt darkness encroaching on me and black spots appeared before my eyes. I fell forward toward the gravel, barely getting my hands down in time. The threads flickered in my mind.
“Enough!” I cried out, feeling power blaze through my words. “STOP!”
The zombies stopped, some crashing to the earth because they’d stopped in mid-step and one foot had been in the air. I felt blood seeping down the corners of my eyes, covering my hands where they lay on the ground. I couldn’t see anything now, the black spots covering my vision and only hearing the roar of silence in my ears. I gathered all the threads in my mind again, pulling them all together with the last vestige of my will. Then I severed them all. All but one.
Blood spurted out of my ears and I fell forward to the ground, bashing my forehead on the gravel. A welcome darkness rushed in.
25.
Light came back to me slowly. I had no idea how long I was out, but at least the pain in my head had fallen to a manageable level. It only felt like a really bad migraine now. I rolled to my back and brought my hands to my head, feeling for the damage. I had a huge scrape on my forehead that brought a sliver of pain when I touched it. My eyes, mouth, nose and ears all had dried blood on them but they’d stopped bleeding.
I slowly brought myself to my knees and crawled along the gravel to one of mom’s lawn chairs. All the pain on my body felt very distant to me now. And every small in comparison to the pain in my head. I felt like I was covered in scrapes and cuts and bruises. I needed about a year to rest. I finally reached the chair and dragged myself into it. The effort brought gasps of pain to my lips and another burst of agony from the area of my head.
I still had a tenuous hold on that lone thread that I’d not severed. Apparently passing out hadn’t been enough for me to let go of it. Lord knows what would have happened if I’d passed out while still holding onto the threads of the whole horde. I shuddered at the thought.
I tweaked the thread, each motion bringing another stir of pain to my head. I could feel the blood begin to flow out of my nose again but I ignored it. I commanded the thread to come before me and it finally did, digging itself out from underneath the pile of dead zombies arrayed out before me. First I saw a hand come out and then another and finally the zombie rose to its feet.
It was Barrett.
I waved him forward, feeling my gut heave as I tugged harder on the thread. He stepped toward me like a marionette on strings, which I guess he kind of was. I made him sit on the chair in front of me, absentmindedly wiping the blood from my nose.
He stared at me impassively, the hunger still in his eyes. My will had imposed itself on his body 100% but I couldn’t override his basic instincts. His dead eyes still flashed on his hunger and I could feel it reverberating through the thread that I held in my mind. I knew that if I let go my control that he’d lunge forward and attack me, trying to eat my flesh, so I had to use every bit of concentration to hold him back.
“Barrett,” I said, “I’m sorry. So sorry. I don’t know what’s going on or how I can do these
I reached forward and grabbed his hand. I would have hugged him if I had the strength to get up, but it wasn’t in me. I held the thread for as long as I could but eventually I just let it go. His body slumped before me.
This was the end of the line.
26.
Okay, not really. Not a hundred percent at the end of the line. I guess there’s a little bit more to tell.
I could feel the call of the shotgun and wanted desperately to end my suffering and join my friends, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt too much like the easy way out and I didn’t feel like I deserved the easy way. I could see the carnage in front of me, the hundreds of people dead because of me, and know that my death wouldn’t be enough for them. It would only ease my guilt and my suffering and they deserved more than that.
I got up on wobbly legs after a time and went back into my trailer. I knew I no longer had anything to fear from the zombies. I’d destroyed them all, somehow. I left the shotgun outside and went in and took a cold shower and cleaned up as best I could. The cold water was little punishment for what I’d done. I packed a bag with a few sets of clothes and grabbed as much money as I could from the trailer. Mom and dad had some stashed away and I had a bit of my own savings, too. I knew that I could go rifle through the clothes of the bodies outside and get more money but I didn’t want to desecrate the dead any more than I already had. My mere existence was a desecration to them.
I walked cross-country and eventually found a ride with a trucker who was more than happy to take me as far as he was going. I later read the news reports and saw that the Litchville Police Department, and Mason’s dad, the Sheriff, eventually found their way into Rosie Acres and were puzzled and disgusted by what they found there. They called in the Feds and the best they could come up with was some kind of drug or disease got into people and drove them insane. How do you explain bodies walking around with the kinds of damage those people had taken? How do you explain the cannibalism and the things that had happened there?
They ultimately didn’t. There were a few survivors, but their stories weren’t believed. What person in their right mind could believe that zombies had walked the earth?
What am I? How do I have the power I do? How do I control this curse from Hell? I don’t know. I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I know that I can feel the threads of dead people. Walking by a graveyard is torture for me now. All those threads throb and want to come to life. If I’m too close to somebody who’s dying I can hear the siren call of their thread and feel it wanting to be set free. Now that I’ve woken up the power I can feel
