He stopped and the staggering girl all but ran into him. Looking over Kvelda’s shoulder, Day saw the ghouls clambering back into the motor launch and casting off still no more than two hundred yards away.
“If you don’t move we’re both dead,” Day said.
He turned and started running and, squeezing his eyes shut a moment, sent the wish into space he hoped would make her come.
Ten yards on he twisted and saw Kvelda close behind, a blank but fixed stare of desperation on her face as she staggered into life once more. Day bit back his grin and tried his hardest to pour on speed, urging her to do the same.
They had run another hundred metres before Day’s sense of dread forced him to look back. It seemed unreasonable that neither gunfire nor the boat’s approach had ended their escape.
Running through ankle-deep water, the thought hadn’t occurred to the ghouls any more than to Day that a high-speed pursuit in a motor boat might be untenable. Though the launch was extremely shallow, when Day glanced back he saw the vehicle on its side and the three ghouls spilled in all directions. The boat was upturned so Day could see the tin bottom split open near the prow. Only one of the ghouls was moving to stand and, as Day and Kvelda ran on, the handgun fire seemed like nothing more than a starter’s gun fired late in the race.
They ran a quarter mile in about two minutes, picking among the rocks, exhausted and flagging in every strength except their will to live. At the base, the grey wall rising overhead several hundred feet seemed beyond gargantuan. It made more sense as a piece of concrete furniture for some giant than as something once built by mankind to service whole communities. In broken sentences, Kvelda quickly explained to Day what she gleaned of the dam’s purpose. The whole idea was foreign to him, but he grasped the principles easily enough however strange.
“We have to get up,” he gasped. “To the top.”
Kvelda stepped back from the wall to get a better view along its face. Then at her direction they started clambering up a series of rusted metal rungs. Though the ladder continued up, at a height of about twenty-five feet there was a submarine door set one step across. The slightest concrete shelf offered foot-rests. Kvelda shuffled over, leaving to Day the hard work of wrenching the long-closed door free.
He grunted as he tried to turn the partly rusted wheel. When it wouldn’t yield he drove his palm down from above into the closest horizontal spokes. Despite the feeling he was crushing the bones in his wrist, Day ignored the pain. Rising quickly again was the feeling of certain impending doom and he knew too much luck had been had for there to be many future reprieves. When the wheel still wouldn’t budge, he tried to wrench it again and, after a moment’s struggle, he found it starting to give.
With a series of awkward squeaks the wheel turned. Resting the weight of his starved, half-naked body against the cold metal door, Day could feel the hidden mechanisms within wake from their slumber and go to work.
As the door opened, Day realised Kvelda was on the wrong side, beyond the now open door, at roughly the same moment the helicopter entered the canyon.
It came towards the dam wall out of a wide arc. As it straightened, the black bubble of the chopper dropped below the height of the surrounding rubble-strewn walls and tipped its nose to the ground, putting on speed at the sight of the fleeing humans.
Day could now better see an enormous cavity of exposed earth in the background, with the now-dwarfed tunnel mouth down at the very bottom. At the top of the canyon, another wall stretched in either direction, ending at concrete bunkers with watchtowers and then moving away at an angle on both sides, presumably forming a hex and joining other watchtowers, and so on and so forth – all along the edge of the farm.
“Damn it, Kvelda,” he shouted. “We’re at the edge of the whole complex. We’re so close.”
“Go, Day! Go!” her wind-snatched reply came.
“No, I’m not losing you. Come on.”
He started to close the door again, hoping she could somehow scurry across, but suddenly it wouldn’t go back in place as easily as he’d hoped. It took him vital seconds to realise the girl was holding it from the other side.
“Day! Go now!” Kvelda shouted. “You go. I’ll follow.”
Knowing there was no time to procrastinate, Day stepped into the steel-lined corridor beyond the open pressure door. Almost instantly the door clanged shut, throwing him in rust-coloured darkness.
“Gods.”
The light spilled back in a moment, Kvelda cranking the door hard behind her. As it screamed shut, Day stood horrified watching through the splinter of daylight the helicopter looming straight for them, so close he was sure it would collide into the wall. Yet the chattering of .50 calibre machineguns and the sudden explosion of noise in the corridor suggested otherwise. Day and Kvelda crouched instinctively and, only when Day realised the closed door, unsecured, was beginning to ease open again, did he jump up to shut it. Through the reinforced metal door he thought he could hear the helicopter moving away, ascending perhaps, but he wasn’t sure.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m alright,” Kvelda said.
She rose stiffly, but the moment she was standing she slumped against the wall. Day also felt the welling of fatigue, however much his body considered itself ready for fight or flight.
They stared at each other wordlessly until Kvelda voiced the thought Day didn’t want to face.
“We have to keep going.”
He nodded but didn’t move. With apparent difficulty, Kvelda eased off the wall and stumbled past him in the close confines. They practically collided, but there was nothing intimate in the gesture. Kvelda gave a low but feminine grunt and steadied herself on the wall and moved off. Day sighed for a moment, then he turned and followed.
The corridor only went for a short distance. It ended in another secure door Day was glad to have less trouble opening. A claustrophobic concrete and iron stairwell was set on the other side. It smelled its age, dusty and corroded. Everything was quiet except for a lone note undercutting all, the sound only Day could discern of trillions of litres of water held under pressure.
They went up for a while and no ghouls appeared. It was dark enough for the vamps, but there was no sign of them. Day wondered if they had access to these tunnels – if they were part of the same network – or if his wish-fuelled intuition was correct and they had moved into a separate, even older series of passages.
“Are you thinking about Carlos?” Kvelda eventually asked.
They had gone up about ten flights.
“No, I’m not,” Day answered.
“Does it feel wrong?”
He hesitated. “Of course.”
“But –”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Day said.
They struggled up two more flights. Day figured they must be close to the top of the dam wall and wondered what they would find next.
“Are you thinking about what he said?” Kvelda asked.
Day shook his head with irritation. “No.”
A sound carried from above. It was soon followed by several more noises. Kvelda kept speaking, low thankfully, but unaware of the sounds beyond the range of her hearing.
“I’m worried he was right, Day. I’m worried –”
“Shhh! Be quiet,” he said, conscious of not making the command too harsh.
“What is it?” she whispered, stopping like Day had done and going into a crouch.
They had passed several more of the submarine doors on the way up, but Day had scorned them, hoping for an exit to the outside rather than going deeper into the new complex. Now he clutched Kvelda’s wrist and, silently, they went back one flight of stairs to where the last door had been.
The grenade came clattering tinnily but flat down the concrete stairs above them and, after a pregnant pause, it exploded several flights overhead. Concrete chips clattered down the middle of the well followed by thick but slower-moving dust. As they started coughing, Day worked at the metal door,
frustrated by the unyielding wheel.
It seemed stuck fast. He grunted quietly, straining until his forearms ached with the tension and his palms bled against the corroded grips. The door wouldn’t move and the dust around them was chokingly thick. Above, more tapping noises sounded and a second explosion, no nearer than the first, sent a fresh rain of debris rushing down. This time the pieces were bigger and Kvelda shrieked as an irregular piece the size and shape of a wedge of cheese bounced off her forehead. The bleeding wound was instantly clotted by concrete powder.
She started to move past him, trying for the doorway below, but Day held her close once more and put his mouth to her ear.
“Wait with me just a moment.”
Day could hear what she could not: multiple footsteps descending slow and carefully through the fog.
As Kvelda started to ask again, Day covered her mouth with his palm. This close, they could stare into each other’s eyes and Day tried to squint meaningfully, conveying his earnest desire for her to trust him.
If she understood, she expressed it by dropping back several steps to give Day room to move. He took her lead and moved one step up, staring hard into the swirling gloom.
In the narrow space the ghoul voice sounded like shouting.
“They could have fallen.”
“No bodies yet,” another replied mechanically.
The voices sounded listless and jaded, devoid of any human feelings for good or ill. Day rushed up three steps and punched his open palm into the throat of the lead ghoul, lifting it from the ground and hurling it back against the concrete wall.
The second ghoul was only a step further on. Day swung his fist into the thing’s head only to realise it had a helmet. As his knuckles cracked, Day snatched at the muzzle of the creature’s gun, a tubular sub-machinegun with a pistol grip. The ghoul tried to wrestle the weapon back in vain. Day’s knee mashed its atrophied gonads and then he tore the weapon out of reach, reversed it, and squeezed the trigger at close range. The helmet wasn’t much protection against this and it flapped its arms in the manner of a dying fish and then went utterly still.
Day hardly stayed to watch. Scurrying up the stairs he emptied the rest of the clip into the first ghoul he had attacked. Its head and shoulders tore apart, the black blood and flecks of meat spattering upwards and sticking to the pocked concrete wall.
When the magazine was empty Day fumbled with the mechanism until Kvelda coolly took the weapon from his hand.
“This one has a sidearm too,” she said, motioning to the ghoul slain last.
While Day took the pistol from the ghoul’s belt, Kvelda relieved the other corpse of its ammunition and reloaded the snub-barrelled gun.
“Take the other ammo too,” Kvelda said.
Day stumbled around to comply.
“Right,” he said.
As Day moved the lightweight carcass to get at the two spare clips, the ghoul’s belt jingled hollowly. Two grenades were attached to its belt. After a moment’s hesitation, he took them as well.
They then crept upwards, conscious now of an ambush possibly lying in wait. After rounding another bend they registered sunlight coming from above and the rank confines of the stairwell were dramatically lessened by a breeze fluttering in from an open pressure door. Concrete dust rose from their limbs.
Day looked at Kvelda to assure himself she was still alert. Then they moved either side of the door, with Day trying to steal a glance beyond.
The breeze was wet with a saltwater tang. Light reflecting off the still-hidden body of water suffused the air.
Directly in front of them was what appeared to be a paved road with guardrails to right and left. The road curved ever-so-slightly and, just like a road, the black shapes of vehicles were parked on it further ahead. Before Day moved out of sight he confirmed what they were – a number of ghoul helicopters standing end on end.
The moment they moved back, a ghoul stepped in through the doorway, an automatic rifle cradled in its arms. Day guessed the undead sentry had been a woman once. It was hard to tell. He held the pistol up and there was a sharp crack as the slide jerked back. The ghoul’s right eye disappeared in a black smudge like an insect hitting a windshield. The ghoul fell inwards and Day moved quickly to strip its gun and ammunition, including a full complement of three grenades. He passed one to Kvelda and nodded in the direction of the choppers.
“Wreck them?” she whispered.
“It rules out pursuit,” Day said.
“What about us?”
“Do you know how to fly one?”
“No,” Kvelda said.
Day shrugged to prove his point. Eyes on the open doorway, he felt tension like a pulse at the back of his mouth. They had no idea how many ghouls were out there. The only thing in their favour was the sunlight and knowing all they could face was ghouls, however well-armed they might be.
“Can you throw that far? To the first one,” Day asked.
Kvelda moved until she could see, her sub-machinegun levelled at the entrance.
“I’m sure of it.”
“Me too.”
“Alright,” Kvelda said.
Accepting this cue, Day produced a grenade and watched as Kvelda did the same. Day nodded, his finger through the ring, and Kvelda pulled the pin free on her grenade and threw. In the same fluid motion she stepped backwards so Day could do the same and then withdraw as well.
Thus sheltered, they weren’t able to watch as the grenades went off; but the result was that the lead helicopter blew up, with the force of the second grenade tipping it onto its side and then over the dam wall railing. The noise was like a caged cyclone going off just beyond their vision.
Day moved forward again and peered out. The next chopper in line had flames all over its cockpit. As Day adjusted his eyes to the sudden glare, he saw several ghouls in their customary black running for the burning chopper from further down the thoroughfare. Then it too exploded in a torrential flash. The ghouls were flattened instantly.
In the doorway, Day nodded to Kvelda and leaped out, turning quickly in the opposite direction. The pressurised door shielded as well as obscured the path, which meant Day was completely unaware of the ghoul group hurrying towards the doorway until suddenly the two parties collided.
One of the ghouls blasphemed and another made a noise that sounded like he’d thrown up in his helmet. Though they already had rifles and SMGs, they still scrambled for position. Day therefore had time to react to Kvelda’s crisp warning.
“Move.”
Obediently, he went into a roll as his companion emptied her gun into the first few ghouls’ chests. Her aim was less precise than she might’ve wished, but the effect was, for the moment, instantaneous, deafening and very effective.
The remaining ghoul hefted its weapon in a panicked rush and Kvelda jumped back behind the steel door. Coming out of his own manoeuvre, Day fired three times from the pistol at close range. He finally hit the creature and blew the top of its head off. The skullcap geysered black blood and pulped brainstem as the ghoul’s body slowly sought the ground, seemingly feeling its way blindly with hands and knees.
The first three ghouls lay crippled and squirming on the tarmac beside the door. Day silenced them one by one and then he looked up, drawing in a soft breath. Over the other side of the road lay the river. It was the biggest body of water he had ever seen. Beyond the grey curtain of the dam wall it stretched, glittering like a vast silver snakeskin, obscured partly by the barren canyon walls rising in weathered cones to right and left.
Far off to the left, beyond the end of the immediate section of road and a structure built into the canyon wall, Day saw another length of man-made wall. Through vents and massive turbines in that wall the river was pouring, white spray filling the distant air like a haze as water was shredded into electricity.
“That’s what the dam was built for,” Kvelda said. “Power.”
“Power? From the water?”
“That’s right. And the
y built a wall here to turn the river, to channel it.”
“They could do that, before the Rising? Move a river?”
“That and a lot more.”
Day shook his head and looked left again. Closer by, a small concreted courtyard and the front of a bunker-like building was set into the rock wall of the canyon. The first chunk of canyon wall occupied the space in front of the distant second wall and its hydro-electric turbines. The bunker and the outcrop in which it was set rose overhead to a height of about a hundred feet.
The road they were standing on was the top of the dam wall. It curved only slightly between its two fixed points. To the left was the bunker with its courtyard blocked by metal drums standing upright and the makeshift barriers between them. Going right, the top of the dam wall was like a boulevard, established as a landing pad for the ghoul choppers.
Beyond the helicopters – two more were now ablaze and the others, including a heavy troop-carrier, sat silent and menacing despite the chaos all around them – the dam wall ended at a wide clearance concreted over years before the 1972 Rising. In this area there were two metal-roofed warehouses and plenty of space for a small fleet of different trucks. There were also two more helicopters, one without any rotors, the other marked ‘police’ and painted in white and blue. Though Day didn’t know what to call them, there were also several forklifts and a small maze of palettes filled with crates, barrels and hessian-covered bundles.
Endless Night Page 27