In Memoriam

by Matt James

  The door to the stairs is flung open. I put two rounds in the drone on the left, and Jill does the same thing to the one on our right. They go spinning back down the stairs and crash into a third one. Instead of heading up to the fourth floor again, we follow the three drones to the landing between the two levels.

  Nearly upon them, I grip the railing and hop over it, skipping the turn-around altogether. Jill follows my lead and shoots the third drone after she lands. Our original plan was for us to head straight for the first floor, through the annihilated remains of the door leading back into the dining room. Regrettably, the stairwell quickly fills up with more drones and changes our plan.

  So, instead, I fling open the door to the second floor. Jill discovers her inner Olympian and leaps the last three stairs. She lands with ease and hustles through the door, rubbing my shoulder as she passes by.

  This is where I almost take a bullet to the head.

  The gunman’s pistol is on the floor, but ten feet to my left. It’s too far away to collect. Growling in frustration, we’re forced to leave it behind. I take off after Jill, and we do exactly what we did on the floors above. Jill and I grab at every doorknob we see. We’re nearly at the end of the hall when the exit to the stairwell is thrown open hard.

  Three of the drones watch us enter the suite before I shut the door and lock it. With nowhere else to go, I head for the balcony and shake my head. Really? I can’t believe we’re about to scale another one of these things already. Yet, here we are.

  “Out we go…again,” I say, unlocking the slider.

  Jill slaps my butt as she steps through.

  In tandem, we each throw our legs over the railing. Below us is nothing but concrete and unmanicured bushes. If we were a floor higher, like before, we’d have the next floor’s railing to use as a step. Instead, it’ll be a fifteen-foot drop, one that could seriously injure us if we land wrong.

  “Aim for the bushes,” I say.

  Jill snorts a laugh. “No shit, really? I thought I’d swan dive into solid concrete instead!”

  Straddling the rail, I smile, getting her attention. She’s straddling the rail too. I lean in and give her a kiss. She leans in, making it a passionate one. Then, the frame to the suite’s front door cracks and the drones are upon us. Before we can get our other legs over the rail, we’re bowled into.

  A pair of drones take us, and the railing, off the balcony. Our foursome plummets to the ground, right into the shrubs lining the pool. As soon as we land, I clumsily roll away from our aggressors, getting stuck in the bushes multiple times. Jill elbows one of them in the left eye-socket. I roar and slug the other in the throat. Then, I unsheathe my knife and slash him across the right cheek.

  Gotta find my gun! I lost it during the fall.

  Shrieks erupt from somewhere behind us. I glance over my shoulder and almost shit my pants. A group of at least ten goblins scramble over one another as they circumvent the empty pool. The new arrivals are enough for the drones to shrink away. Either that, or it’s the frigid winds swirling around us.

  Their bodies must be frail since the arrow easily punched through the drone that I killed upstairs. I'm guessing that the poison flowing through their system has also made them intolerant to the outside temperature. Jimmy resists it because he’s just that big and strong.

  We shove through the drones and find the closest door back into the hotel. We go right and duck through a shredded canopy. I open the door and watch as the drones are overwhelmed. It wouldn’t have mattered if the weather affected Jimmy’s minions or not. They didn’t stand a chance.

  Neither will we if we hang around too long.

  I slip in behind Jill and go to lock the door but can’t find the deadbolt thumbturn. There isn’t one. This is an electric lock, one that is usually operated by only a keycard. Without power, it’s no better than a zipperless tent flap.

  “Well,” Jill mutters, “at least we’re back in the dining room.”

  One of the goblins proves me right when it collides headfirst into the tinted glass door. The door is thrown open before the glass can break, and we watch as it hits the floor and goes limp. Either the goblin is concussed, or he’s dead. More follow him in, but not all of them.

  Jimmy shows up behind them and bashes two of them aside with his thick, muscular arms. Each of the appendages are the size of tree trunks. The goblins go sailing into the air, one to the left and the other to the right. Then, his lower jaw unhinges, and he bites another of the goblins in half. For just a second, the Unseen’s hips and legs stay erect before Jimmy crushes them with his girth. His head turns toward us, and he explodes into the hotel through the same door we just came through.

  And when I say Jimmy went through the same door we did, I mean, he literally when straight through it. The door, plus a lot of the wall surrounding it, is torn away from the rest of the building. Three goblins cling to his powerful, legless body. Jimmy doesn’t pay the Unseen any attention, however. He’s locked right on us humans.

  None of his drones are Unseen, I realize. He can only turn humans!

  More Unseen pour in through the elephant-sized break in the wall. Now, we have two problems. We have Jimmy to deal with along with his drone. We'll also have to try and survive a goblin blitz too. High-pitched screams announce the arrival of something even more terrible. A siren leaps into the air, pouncing on Jimmy’s upper back. Her added presence spooks him, and he begins to thrash. Jill and I open fire. I aim for his face, while Jill takes out anything that still seems interested in us.

  Everything within a fifteen-foot radius of Jimmy is reduced to a bloodied smear or is broken and tossed aside. He twists his upper half around in a full one-eighty, and snags one of the goblins near his rattle. We watch in horror as, in one quick jerking motion, he rips the creature in half. Then, he chucks the lower half at a second goblin back near the hole in the wall. The upper half is flung at us and hits Jill in the shins. She's knocked off her feet, landing hard against the nearby wall.

  The hitchhiking siren chomps down on the side of Jimmy’s neck and sends him lunging shoulder first into the same wall Jill hit.

  Well, that’s one way to get rid of an unwanted rider.

  While witnessing the show of brute force, I had quickly scooped up Jill and half-dragged her into the hall leading back to the elevators. After a couple of steps, she shoves out of my arms and starts to move on her own.

  We stumble when Jimmy roars, shaking loose pictures from the walls and ceiling tiles from the ceiling. Both Jill and I turn and watch wide-eyed as he picks up the dazed siren by her head. Then, he squeezes, crushing her skull with his bare hand.

  He’s both incredible and terrifying to look at, currently reared up in the air like a cobra. With everything dead in the dining room beside him, Jill and I know what’s coming next. The mammoth Unseen-hybrid snorts, visibly expelling his warmer internal air into the cold winter air pouring in from the outside.

  I’m frozen in awe and fear, but I’m still cognizant enough to see his body shivering from the brisk wind. Jerry said his brother doesn’t do well in cold weather and can only handle short periods of it. If he can blow the roof…

  Jimmy roars, flexing his arms and chest hard as he does. This time, we don’t wait for him to shiver again. We just turn and run.

  This better work.

  If it doesn’t, we’re all dead.

  21

  Jill and I rush deeper into the hallway, happy when Jimmy pauses and doesn’t follow. He’s much too big to fit, and he knows it. Though, we’re forced to backpedal when he attempts to squeeze his girth through. The half-wood paneled walls bow and crack beneath his weight. The drywall that makes up the top half of the hallway simply crumbles to dust, casting the scene in a suffocating cloud.

  Even worse, once Jimmy realizes he isn’t going to fit, no matter how hard he tries to get to us, he unplugs himself from the entrance to the dining room. In swirls a sharp wind. It nearly blinds us. My eyes are burning from both the un
forgiving temperature and the junk floating in the air.

  Downwind, Jimmy’s odor funnels into the corridor as well. It’s the icing on the dreadful cake. I sneer and back away but stop when I hear gunfire erupt somewhere behind the creature. He turns, and growls, as bullets impact his back, doing nothing. But one of them hits him in his human chest as he turns. He doesn’t bleed much, unfortunately, but the impact did seem to bother him.

  “Frank, Jill, run!”

  Andy?

  I’m not sure why she’s here, but she is, and she gives us the distraction we need. Jill and I take off down the hallway, but instead of heading through the intersection in front of the elevators, we hang a left and head back to the hotel lobby.

  “Andy, what are you doing?” I ask through my radio.

  “Saw…him coming,” she replies, breathing hard. I think she’s running. “Then, I heard gunshots and figured it was you.”

  “You okay?”

  Andy laughs. “Yeah, sure…”

  Stupid question.

  “Where are—”

  Andy pulls open the unpowered doors and stumbles in, falling and sliding across the tile floor. Jill and I watch as she disappears behind a sofa. It shifts when she hits it.

  We wheel around it and help our friend up. She’s a mess, a mash of dirt and blood, but nothing seems to be life-threatening. She confirms as much without us asking.

  “I’m…fine…” She sucks in a couple of deep breaths, hands on her knees. “Just winded.”

  “Is he following you?” Jill asks, stepping toward the doors.

  “I don’t think s—”

  Jimmy smashes through the glass windows to the left of us, turning the check-in counter into expensive, well-designed kindling. I leapfrog the couch and dart for the left side of the fireplace. Jill and Andy took a more direct route and beat me to it. Good thing they did too because Jimmy’s backend whips around and smashes through it, clogging the hall back to the elevators with debris.

  “Frank!” Jill yells, somewhere beyond the destruction.

  “You guys okay?” I shout, squeezing off a shot.

  I aim for Jimmy’s less-protected areas, happy to see him flinch when it strikes below his left pec. Like before, that part of his body bleeds. It’s not much, but at least it confirms that he can be injured.

  Where’s Cooper when you need him?

  Oh, right… He’s on the roof.

  I don’t want to split up from the girls, but I know it’ll be for the best. Jill and Andy can head straight for the waterpark and get into position. I’ll have to figure out another way in.

  So, I turn and bolt for the front entrance. I slip through the open sliders and bounce off our Yukon, emptying my magazine into the glass as I run right. Jimmy is close behind but slows as he shoves through the same doors. They’re ripped from their hinges and splinter against the SUV. Besides that, the Yukon is spared from further damage.

  “Cooper!” I shout into my shoulder mic. “Get ready!”

  “Copy that,” he replies, his voice muffled by the wind. He and Jerry are getting pummeled. Even with the sun out, it’s got to be freezing up there. Even now, on ground level, I’m uncomfortable.

  With nowhere else to go, I head out to the main road, Historic Nature Trail. From there, I should be able to loop around to the rear of the hotel and find another way back in. I should, at least, be able to lose Jimmy.

  I reload and jump over a row of low bushes and take a sharp right, south down the sidewalk. I estimate that it's about a hundred feet before the property line ends, and when it does, I’m forced to holster my gun and climb an iron fence to get back onto the hotel lot. The bars are cold and slick, but I scale the barrier without too much trouble.

  Jimmy has no trouble either.

  Just when I flip onto the opposite side, the snake-man rips the section of fencing from the ground and lifts it into the air—me along with it. On my hands and knees, I grip onto the ever-rising barricade, staring through the bars, right into the open maw of the Jimmy-monster. The ground around us disappears as my makeshift elevator continues higher and higher, not that I can see much around his thick upper body.

  We tilt to my left, back toward the hotel. I catch a glimpse of his snake half as it grips and crushes the façade of the Holiday Inn. This is how he scales the outside of the building to get back inside via the hole in the waterpark ceiling.

  Is that where you’re taking me?

  “Fuck off!” I shout, drawing my gun. I shoot him point-blank in the face. Probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done…

  Memo: Shooting your pilot in the head is a bad idea.

  He cringes and flinches hard to his right, tipping me more towards the hotel. I leap away from my platform, across a four-foot gap of nothing, and roll onto a roof that’s over sixty feet high. Both Jimmy and the fence disappear from view, falling back from whence they came. Assuming that I didn’t kill him, I get to my feet and scale the sloped, snowy roof, moving higher and higher. It isn’t all that steep, but it is slick.

  The wind up here, on top of one of the tallest buildings in the area, is bitter cold. My body naturally responds to the temperature by shivering, essentially locking me in place. I have no face covering to speak of, only my sock hat. It’s all that’s protecting me from the elements, besides my weathered jacket. I need to get a new one ASAP.

  Guiding myself along the roof with one hand, I holster my gun and pull my sock hat lower over my ears. There’s no way to do everything with just the one hand. My Glock is going to have to stay put until I’m back on solid ground, or at least until I have better footing.

  I sit on my ass and slide down the back half of the roof and head right. The hotel roof is constructed with odd, sharp angles. The building itself is, actually. From here, it looks as if the hotel was built a section at a time. Each one of the individually designed buildings is attached to one another by a short walkway that’s as wide as a typical hall. And of course, as my luck would have it, they’re all peaked along the center.

  Straddling the pointed tip, I shuffle along and get halfway to the next major section of the hotel. The floor—roof—beneath me shakes. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s Jimmy coming back for retribution.

  I guess he didn’t take being shot in the face very well.

  A roar spooks me, and I slip and fall to my hands and knees atop the narrow path. That, combined with a swirling air current, was almost enough for me to plummet seventy feet to my death. I can honestly say that this was a terrible idea.

  I don’t get to my feet, not yet. I scurry along on all fours until I get to the next building. When I do, I jump to my feet and move quickly along the next section of roofing. This time, it tilts to the right. I stay low and keep my left hand on the peak at all times.

  More roars echo around me, and I decide to stop and take a quick look-see. When I do, I witness Jimmy’s sneering face appear as he rises up over the edge of the roof. He’s back where I started luckily. If he had skirted around the hotel and met me where I am now, I’d be seriously boned.

  But there’s hope, based on what I see. Jimmy is bleeding heavily. There’s a pus-colored fluid draining from his left eye socket. The gunshot wound in his chest bled normal red blood, but not this one. It doesn’t matter why, only that my rash decision worked.

  Jimmy is, in fact, beatable.

  The next leg of my journey is going to be a rough one. The roof beneath me disappears after thirty more feet. There, I stand on the edge and look for a landing spot. Thankfully, there's one that is only about ten or twelve feet down to the top of the fifth floor. From here, I can see that the roof continues in a downward stepladder until it reaches the waterpark that’s aligned with the third floor.

  The biggest challenge I face is the dismount from the sixth floor. The fall is going to suck, but so is the angle of the landing spot. It’s peaked in the middle, leaning hard to the left and right. There’s a stone chimney to the right, but not the left.

&nbs
p; Hmmm.

  Maybe I can time this thing correctly and aim for the—

  I jump just as the roof beneath me trembles. Still mid-thought, I attempt to land in a baseball slide, which I somehow do. Hard. My left shoulder, back, and ass take the brunt of the angled arrival. I’m also happy to report that I don’t feel anything jam or break! The combination of my forward and downward momentum takes me a few feet further until my motion becomes entirely descending, feet-first, straight toward the edge of the fifth-floor roof.

  “Shiiit!” I yell, kicking and grabbing for anything I can.

  I don’t know how, but my boot catches something and, more or less, slingshots me into the stone chimney I sought. Crumpled up against it, I take two seconds to catch my breath.

  Jimmy roars again.

  “Come on, man,” I grumble, getting to my feet.

  The next descent, this time to the fourth floor, goes much smoother. The roof doesn’t just abruptly end. It turns into a softly sloping decline, not unlike a snow-covered bunny hill.

  Exhausted, I graciously plop down on my butt and shove myself forward. Slowly and smoothly, I eventually reach the end of my gentle ride. It’s a quick jaunt to the edge of the fourth floor, and like the last one, it too resembles a slide.

  “Yay, for me,” I mockingly celebrate, throwing my hands in the air as I descend.

  Grunting as I get back to my feet, I turn in horror and look back up to the sixth floor. Jimmy lifts his upper half into the air and bellows into the sky. The sound is carried by the breeze and hits me square in the face. Finished, his chin tilts down in my direction. He senses me. He knows exactly where I am.

  Time to go!

  I only have one more section of roofing to traverse before I get to where Cooper and Jerry should be. It’s a straight shot from here to them.

  “You guys in position?” I ask into my shoulder mic.

  Cooper answers back. “We are. What’s your location?”

  I laugh. “Look south.”

  I see movement to the north as someone stands and steps out of a shadowy corner.