The pressure slamming into his abdomen was ceaseless. The pain in his chest made him hate the fact that he was still breathing.
Is it possible? Could it be—
His body could endure no more. His legs crumbled like ancient pillars beneath him and he collapsed into the snow, writhing and gasping, his body jerking as the invisible hands continued to slam into his solar plexus.
Emmit knew he wasn't moving, but the bright white orb of fire was; it sought him out, approaching like the headlamp of a locomotive barreling down a long passageway and heading straight for him. He put up his hands to try to block the glare as he was enveloped in it, and was struck dumb by what he saw as he moved to cover his face.
The black stains on his palms were crumbling. They flaked and peeled off like aged paint, leaving his pale white skin clean and unscarred. As the glow around him grew brighter still, he could see the tiny pieces defying gravity around him, disintegrating into a fine dust.
Wait a minute— I can see.
Even as the sensation of molten steel being poured into his chest intensified, Emmit was astounded by just how well he could suddenly see without his lost glasses. He could see every particle of dust and ice and snow suspended in the beams of light around him, spiraling up and off into the black sky above like galaxies being born.
Emmit's agonized heart stopped in his chest as he realized that he'd allowed the dead to catch up with him.
Shit shit shit I stopped moving I stopped—
He pivoted to look over his shoulder, grimacing at the tug of his tortured chest muscles, just as the dead body of a soldier was staggering up to greet him. The light washed over it like a searchlight, illuminating its grimed fatigues and the wrinkled leather of its face with a bluish luster. The soldier's milky white eyes were wide and eager, but it only wore a half-smile. The left side of its mouth was frozen shut, the bruise-colored flesh of its lips stretching and distorting but held fast by a crystalline mass of dark fluid. The dead soldier paused and cocked its head to one side, staring at Emmit like a curious child, then resumed shambling forward. Humanoid shadows stood out in the darkness behind it like tombstones, and then they were on all sides of him.
The dead soldier moaned the word "thief" and extended its convulsing hand, bone white fingers tipped with black nails extending out from fingerless leather gloves. Emmit knew there was nowhere to run and looked defiantly into the creature's blank eyes. He waited for the pain; what was a little more after what he was already feeling?
The corpse's arm broke the barrier of the tunnel Emmit knelt in, and then Emmit saw something he’d never expected to see. The zombie's face changed, and it was no longer grinning. Its peeling brow drew down into a stare of frustration and animosity, the half-smile curving down into a stroke frown and making it look like a rotting pumpkin. It stared at its own arm, grinding its teeth together so hard that Emmit could hear them crunching and snapping out of their sockets. Then the thing screamed, a throaty and bubbling roar that tore through the teeming masses around it and made all the slouching figures stumble cautiously back away from it.
It had only taken a few seconds. The light had formed a protective barrier around Emmit like a force field, and the dead soldier's arm was disintegrating before his eyes. The flesh of its hand began to flake off like the stains on Emmit's palm had, the outer epidermis going first and then great chunks of the dried sinew beneath it. They fell off the bones like overcooked ribs. The soldier's forearm detached neatly at the elbow, turning lazily end over end as it floated up above Emmit's head. It fractured into little more than black ash and debris until there was nothing left but a maelstrom of dark particles.
Emmit was in too much pain to feel any joy from it; his only thought was that he would at least perish on his own, safe in his circle of light and not buried under a mound of decayed living corpses. He had found the Rev's mythical light, or rather, it had found him— but now he would die bathed in it. That wasn't quite the escape he'd had in mind.
Emmit closed his eyes and waited for some sensation to come, something to let him know that death had arrived.
The invisible hands began to slam into his midsection again, racking his body with seizures and agitating the already bruised muscles. He began to feel drowsy and dizzy, paired with the sensation that he was somehow flying through space while prone. It was the same feeling he got from drinking way too much on an empty stomach, his mattress flipping like a coin as he clung to it.
"Stop," he moaned, to whomever or whatever might be jackhammering his sternum. He tried to crawl away, reaching weakly for a handful of snow to help him along. Instead of snow, he grabbed open air. He wasn't even on the ground anymore; he was hovering above it.
Emmit opened his eyes and looked up, and saw the ground far below him. He was drifting into the sky upside down, pulled by some strong and undeniable force through a transparent cylinder of rotating light beams. He
