Anything That Moves
The dead did not run like a crowd. Crowds argued with themselves. They slowed at narrow doors, broke around obstacles, and left gaps where one frightened person chose a different direction.
These bodies turned together.
Leo followed them through the civic arcade. Black threads tightened between wrists, jaws, and ankles. One body struck a bench and fell; the others changed course in the same instant, without looking back. Their shoes beat one rhythm against the tiled floor.
The nearest man broke that rhythm and lunged. Leo caught his wrists across the rifle, drove him into a display column, and kicked him under the bodies behind.
Gauss threw a dead woman through a shop window. She started crawling back before he lowered his arm.
More joined from the dark shops. A woman crawled from beneath a pharmacy shutter and bit at Leo's armored shin. Three men in office clothes descended an escalator that had stopped years ago. At every entrance, the new bodies waited until a thread found a moving hand or open mouth. Some joined the forward rhythm. Those close enough to touch Leo or Gauss attacked instead.
The fastest group took the administration passage.
Leo saw its turn travel backward through the rest of the arcade. The first bodies changed direction. A breath later, the others followed.
“That group moves first,” he said.
Gauss looked toward the parallel entrance to the tram underpass. “Both branches reach the memorial.”
“Then we split up?”
“I'll take the underpass. Stay with this group. I'll see which body moves first in the other one.”
It was a good precaution. Leo disliked it because he had not suggested it.
Gauss shoved an attacker over the tram railing and disappeared down the stairs after it. Leo tore his leg from the pharmacy woman's grip and entered the administration passage behind the faster bodies.
The passage narrowed between ruined offices. The lead group slipped through. The bodies behind it did not. Two dead men turned sideways across the corridor, their arms pulled wide by threads running ahead. When Leo came within reach, both lunged from opposite walls.
Leo fired twice. One knee broke; one shoulder struck the wall. The bodies collapsed without leaving him room to pretend he had helped them. Their strings snapped forward and fastened to the nearest runners.
The lead group accelerated.
“The threads moved into the lead group,” Leo said over the radio.
“Can you see where they end?”
“I can't see where all of them end.”
The man with the broken knee bit down on the rifle's lower handguard. Leo wrenched it free. The second body hooked an arm around his boot, forcing him to stamp on its elbow while he kept watching the runners ahead.
A man in a transit coat ran near the center. Threads crossed his chest and throat. Each body around him copied his turns a fraction later. He looked less like a puppet than the hand inside several puppets at once.
Leo needed proof. A hand scraped across the back of his helmet. The bodies climbing over the two fallen men made patience feel like another kind of mistake.
He fired at the wrist of a woman tethered to the transit worker, then at the ankle of a second body beside her. Both fell. Their loose lines found the moving man in the coat.
He jerked forward. The whole group followed. The bodies nearest Leo turned back to tear at him, but the man in the transit coat kept running.
“I found the body controlling this group,” Leo said.
Gauss did not congratulate him. “Did the others wait for him to turn?”
The transit worker reached the end of the passage before Leo could watch another full turn.
“I'm checking.”
He already sounded less certain. That did not make the corridor behind him less full.
The dead he had shot began to move again. The man with the broken knee rolled onto his stomach. The other pushed away from the wall with the arm Leo had not hit. Neither tried to stand. They only needed to slow him long enough for the next rank to close.
Leo stepped over the first body. A hand closed around his ankle.
He drove his heel into the wrist. The fingers released, then caught his trouser leg higher up. More hands reached through the gap. An old woman bit at his knee joint. A boy clawed at the rifle sling. A jawless body battered his thigh. None stopped when the first attack failed.
The transit worker was getting away.
Leo tore free. The transit worker was almost at the end of the passage. Another hand brushed the back of Leo's boot, and he ran after the only answer still moving away from him.
The administration passage opened beside a broad memorial intersection. A stone wall curved around one side. Across the armored avenue, a narrow service lane continued between municipal buildings toward a small theatre district.
The transit worker stopped at the memorial.
His threads did not.
He turned on Leo and seized the rifle. Leo drove him chest-first into the memorial wall. While the dead man clawed at the weapon, the threads slid away from him and joined bodies emerging from the tram underpass. One of those bodies had already turned before the first line reached it.
Gauss appeared behind the concrete stair abutment on that side. One body hung from his armored shoulder; he caught it by the throat and drove it down behind the cover.
“The first movement is coming from this side now,” he said.
Leo watched the transit worker fall. The black lines that had made him look important passed across his body without slowing.
“I followed a relay.”
“Then he was bait,” Gauss said, his voice still level. “We can discuss the mistake after we survive this intersection.”
Only then did Leo see how large the position was.
Several hundred dead residents filled the approaches around the intersection. They poured from the arcade behind him, the administration offices, the tram stairs, and the mouths of streets beyond the memorial. The nearest rushed Leo and Gauss. The rest formed moving columns that fed new attackers into every gap. More stood inside broken entrances, moving only when the network reached them. Dark threads vanished into the mass and reappeared dozens of bodies away.
A turn began near the theatre lane. Hundreds of heads followed it in widening waves.
Leo braced the transit worker against the stone and tried to find an edge to the network. There was none. Strings crossed like black wire between the nearest bodies. Farther away, a bank queue folded into the road and residents climbed through a bus's broken windows. The movement continued beyond what he could see.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Some wore the damage that had killed them. Others looked as if they had resumed their journey home years late. One man carried a little girl on his shoulders. When the wave reached them, his left foot and her right hand moved together.
Fingers hooked beneath Leo's rifle sling. He broke them against the wall and stopped trying to count. Whatever waited behind the strings had already reached farther than he could see.
The administration passage behind Leo filled shoulder to shoulder. The front bodies climbed onto the transit worker pinned against the wall and reached around him for Leo. From the concrete abutment across the memorial, Gauss had a clear line into the passage. Leo still stood too close to the opening.
“Move left and stay behind the corner.”
Leo shifted deeper behind the masonry return. Gauss leaned out from the abutment.
Orange light built inside the weapon's forward vents. Gauss fired once through the passage.
The beam crossed the dense front rank and opened a smoking lane. It did not free anyone. Threads sprang from the severed bodies and buried themselves in residents already running across the intersection. The moving group became wider.
The bodies behind the cut entered the burning gap and climbed over what remained. Three threads raised an armless woman by her coat; a dead man beside her took her weight. Together they rushed Leo like one damaged animal. He caught them on his armored forearm and forced them back.
Leo raised the rifle but did not fire. The first four hits had only drawn the strings closer together. Another bullet would strengthen the network, not break it.
The weapon's vents stayed bright. At the tram-side abutment, Gauss crushed one snapping jaw against the concrete and used the body to hold two more out of reach.
“Can your weapon fire again?” Leo asked.
“It can, if you don't mind losing the barrel.”
Something heavy moved beyond the avenue.
Leo heard tracks before he saw the vehicle. The sound was slow and regular, almost ordinary. Then a secondary gun turned toward a fallen resident beside a wrecked evacuation barrier.
The resident's hand twitched.
The gun fired. Stone chips jumped from the road. The hand disappeared.
Gauss stopped every movement the avenue could see. Behind the abutment, he kept one attacker pinned beneath his boot. Leo withdrew behind the masonry return opposite him while dead hands followed around its blind side.
The armored vehicle entered the intersection.
Its turret carried old impact scars and fresh growth. Skin filled the seams around one optic. Fingers protruded beneath an open loading cover, withdrawing into the vehicle when the turret moved. A man's face pressed behind a cracked vision block. His mouth worked before any sound reached Leo.
Leo's sight changed.
C-RANK ANOMALY DETECTED
DESIGNATION: THE LAST TANK
CAUSAL KERNEL: UNRESOLVED
OBSERVED RULE: MOVEMENT WITHIN THE DEFENDED LOOP MAY BE ACQUIRED
The main turret passed over Leo's corner.
He had stopped before it reached him. The barrel continued toward the largest running group—the same bodies that had taken the transferred strings from Gauss's shot.
Voices came from inside the armor.
“AVENUE FOUR. MOVING COLUMN.”
Another voice spoke beneath it, hoarse and close.
“CIVILIANS NOT CLEAR.”
The Puppeteer's largest crowd stopped.
Every body behind the wrecked barrier became still. The attackers inside the blind sides of the tram abutment and the masonry return did not. One drove Leo into the wall while another bit his armored wrist. He held both behind the corner, moving where the tank could not see. The turret did not turn away.
“HOLD THE LINE,” the crew said.
Gauss lowered himself behind the concrete abutment.
Leo was already against the stone corner when the tank fired.
The shell struck the place where the running column had been acquired. Bodies, road, and the evacuation barrier vanished inside one gray impact. The masonry corner shielded Leo from the direct blast. Dust pressed around both sides of it, but the wall remained between him and the shell.
Only that wall had saved him. One step farther out, and the shot would have torn him apart with the crowd.
Fragments struck the far face of the memorial. None reached him.
When Leo looked again, the barrier and several dozen bodies were gone. Others had landed behind both covers. The first was already crawling toward him.
Hundreds remained.
The dead filled the hollow, climbing into the crater over pieces Leo refused to name. The broken road slowed them. Nothing made them hesitate.
Leo had not aimed the tank. He had not known it existed. But his mistake had brought them to the intersection, and his mind would not let go of that part.
Across the avenue, Gauss lifted two fingers: stay down. Leo obeyed before pride could turn the order into an argument. He planted one knee on a puppet's back and tore its hands from his sling.
The threads did not withdraw. They crawled over the crater and fastened to moving residents on both sides of it.
Metal opened inside the tank. Two arms unfolded from the loading space, one bare and one still wearing the remains of a uniform sleeve. They dragged a shell into the mechanism while the voice behind the vision block continued to whisper that the avenue was not clear.
“The main gun is reloading,” Gauss said.
Gauss threw the body under his boot into the next two attackers, left the abutment, and crossed the avenue.
The tank's main barrel remained committed to the crater. Its secondary gun still pointed toward the ruined barrier, away from the theatre side. Gauss reached the masonry return at the theatre service lane before the loading arms forced the breech shut.
Leo struck one attacker with the rifle stock and moved behind the memorial. Another clung to his sling until the concrete abutment tore it free. He took Gauss's cover.
The tank rolled closer. The abutment forced the tram-side attackers to reach Leo one at a time. He pinned the first with his boot while the next clawed over its back. The damaged optic passed within shotgun range, tissue contracting behind its housing.
He slung the rifle and raised the electromagnetic shotgun.
“The breech is still open,” Gauss said over the radio.
“I see it.”
Leo fired while teeth scraped across his armored knee.
The first flechette spread tore the optic housing away. Metal peeled outward. The fused tissue beneath it closed like an eyelid and opened again.
Voices inside the tank changed.
“ARMORED BREAKTHROUGH. MEMORIAL SIDE.”
The turret began to return.
Leo focused on the next cartridge already chambered. The fourth mark tightened beneath his sleeve.
TECHNICIAN'S FRENZY
Selected carrier: loaded electromagnetic-shotgun cartridge
Cost: 1 anomalous energy
Next combined impact only
His reserve changed from 79 to 78.
He accepted the cost and fired into the exposed seam.
Blue light entered with the flechettes. The optic collapsed inward. The turret jerked past Leo's cover and stopped with the damaged side facing the memorial wall.
It was not blind. The other optics still moved. The main barrel began correcting from a worse angle. Leo shoved the pinned body into the next attacker and heard Gauss striking bodies away from the theatre-lane mouth over the radio.
“The main gun chose the largest moving group,” Leo said.
“I saw the turret follow the crowd.”
“I can make that crowd larger.”
“I was hoping you had an idea that required fewer dead people.”
Leo looked past the abutment.
A dense relay was running along the near edge of the crater. Office badges struck ruined chests. One woman still carried a shopping bag looped around her wrist. Their mouths repeated separate last words in the same rhythm.
He needed them to become the largest target.
Leo let the shotgun hang from its sling. A dead hand caught the strap; he crushed the wrist against the abutment and brought the rifle back up. He chose two bodies on the outside of the moving group—one with a line drawn tight through its wrist, another carrying three lines at the knee.
He fired twice.
Both limbs failed. The bodies dropped. Their strings leaped into the running column, pulling more residents into its pace.
The group widened. Forty bodies became sixty, then more as the Puppeteer filled the gaps from the surrounding approaches.
The tank abandoned Leo.
Its turret turned toward the larger motion.
“MOVING COLUMN,” the crew began.
The shopping bag still bounced at the edge of Leo's scope. He lowered the rifle before he had to watch the barrel settle on it. The bodies behind the tram abutment pressed harder, using the one beneath his boot as a step.
“Your diversion worked,” Gauss said.
“You can make the next diversion.”
“That's fair.”
The loading mechanism locked.
Leo looked across the avenue. Gauss waited behind the theatre-lane return. Between them lay open road, the crater, and the tank's moving barrel.
Then the Puppeteer changed the problem.
Bodies surged from the tram underpass behind Leo. More entered the theatre service lane behind Gauss. The movement spread outward through the district. Hundreds of dead residents turned at once, not toward the laboratory now, but toward the two living men who had stopped following.
The first bodies reached the back of Leo's abutment. One caught the rifle sling. Another closed its teeth on his shoulder plate. Leo forced both behind the concrete's blind side and kept his movements hidden from the tank. His legs tightened to run. He forced them to remain under him.
At the theatre mouth, Gauss held three bodies inside the narrow lane with his armored shoulders and the stock of his weapon. More climbed over them. He could not remain there.
Neither could cross without drawing the tank's guns.
The tank's damaged optic searched past Leo. Its working side found the larger theatre-lane crowd closing behind Gauss.
The fused crew spoke.
“THEATRE SERVICE LANE. CONTINUOUS COLUMN.”
Gauss stopped every movement visible from the avenue. His shoulders still jerked behind the theatre-lane corner as the dead tried to drag him into the lane.
Leo moved toward the road before he had a plan, but the abutment still hid him from the tank. Gauss raised one armored hand toward him, palm down.
Stay.
Leo froze before his boot crossed the abutment's sightline. The rifle stock shifted against his glove. He tightened his grip until it hurt. The tank did not turn.
The crowd behind Gauss did not. A dead hand closed over the back of his helmet.
“HOLD THE LINE,” the tank said.
Before the last word finished, the barrel stopped moving.