by Sam Sisavath
And she didn’t want to do that. God, she didn’t want to do that…
She glanced over at Becker, standing next to her.
“How’s your leg?” he asked.
“Stop asking me about my damn leg,” Gaby said.
He grinned. “Just worried, is all.”
She nodded at the door. “The lights.”
“What lights?” Becker said.
“Exactly.”
She didn’t have to get any closer to see the dark spots leaking out from the partially open door into their tunnel. Darkness, because the lights on the other side had either been turned off or somehow shut down.
“Oh,” Becker said.
“How are we gonna do this?”
“I guess I’ll open the door and you shoot whatever tries to come through that’s not one of us. That sound good to you?”
“No, but what choice do we have?”
“We could turn around and retreat back to the warehouse.”
“We gotta go through B. We have to get to Lara.”
Becker sighed. “Then I guess we gotta go through B.”
Gaby kept her rifle pointed while Becker slung his and moved hesitantly (I guess he’s not a total idiot after all) toward the door. He reached forward until he could get a grip on the handle above the lever without getting too close. He gave her another look, and she responded with a nod.
Becker seemed to count down silently before pulling with a heavy, loud grunt.
Gaby took a quick step forward as the door began to swing open…
Nine
Bodies.
They lay crumpled in the hallway. She glimpsed blue BDUs and a shoulder patch with the familiar Inguz symbol partially smeared with blood (Ours), but also black vests over civilian clothes (Not ours). A body just a few feet from the opened door lay on its side, the front facing her. There was a circled M in the center of his assault vest.
Mercerians. How the hell did they get down here?
The bodies lay in pools of blood that looked oddly green, the result of overwhelming darkness infused with the yellow lights coming from her section of the tunnels. Fading footprints (Docks’s) were visible in all the wetness, leading toward the door.
What happened to the lights?
Eyes. Black eyes, peering out at her from the blackness, preceding the sound of shuffling feet—the splash-splash of soles moving in the thick blood-caked floor—as they stepped closer as if drawn to the light.
No, not to the light.
To her.
Ghouls. There were ghouls in B.
Her body froze, and Gaby’s fingers tightened around the rifle. She stood perfectly still, as if they would unsee her if she didn’t move a single muscle. Of course that was silly because they had already seen her.
She remembered the last time she had come face-to-face with so many of the creatures, back in a town called Axton. That wasn’t very long ago, and the confrontation had nearly cost her her life. It would have, if not for what Keo had done.
Crazy Keo.
She would never forget the sight of him on that horse of his, flying into the cold night through the hole in the back of the church. Only Keo would do something like that. She wished the crazy bastard was beside her right now, facing these—
“Ghouls!” Gaby shouted just before she pulled the trigger, and the rifle bucked in her hands and she thought, Silver bullets. God, I hope Springer was carrying silver bullets in his magazines!
It turned out that he had, because the first wave of emaciated forms that began surging forward dropped one after another as the rounds struck them.
One ghoul—two—five!
She stumbled back and pulled the trigger again and again and again. Gaby was vaguely aware of Becker to her left, also shooting, the muzzle flashes from his rifle flickering in the corner of her eye as he, too, began backing up.
Bullet casings flicked out of her M4 as she fired, arcing through the air and ricocheting off the wall. A couple bounced back in front of her face while others landed behind her before disappearing underneath her backtracking boots.
Her senses were quickly overloaded by the pop-pop-pop of hers and Becker’s weapons, the gunshots giving off a distinctively alien sound thanks to all the concrete in the walls and ceiling and the floor around them. She thought her ears would explode from the constant barrage of noise assaulting her eardrums, but they never did because she could still hear every single clink-clink-clink! of shell casings landing around her.
Bodies fell in front of them, the ping-ping! of rounds glancing off bones and striking the walls, while others bounced into another ghoul and dropped it, too. Their bodies were so thin, their muscles so weak that the bullets had no trouble punching through flesh and into the ones behind them, silver-tipped lead felling more and more ghouls as they crowded through the tight corridor, bony legs splashing the blood at their feet.
And yet they came, stumbling over their dead and those of the human remains before them, while others slipped and fell into the pools of blood. Bones shattered against bullet impacts, squirts of thick blood filling the air and splashing the walls.
A ghoul’s head caved in as its body fell, and it was trampled. Another’s arm detached and it, too, dropped—while the bullet kept going and punctured the chest cavity of another coming up behind it.
Still, they kept coming, emerging out of the darkness before her eyes in waves, and all Gaby could think was, How did they get down here? How did the Mercerians get down here? How did they know about the backup plans?
And another voice in her mind shouted, Shut up and shoot!
And she did.
Again and again, but there were so many of them.
So many.
Always so many…
Then, just like that, her rifle emptied and Gaby shouted, “Changing!”
“Go go go!” Becker shouted as he slid over to the middle of the hallway, essentially taking her spot, and continued firing his own weapon, pulling the trigger so fast that all she could see was a blur.
Gaby ejected her empty mag and grabbed one of the spares behind her back and shoved it in, even as she spun around to look down the hallway, her mind screaming, Where the hell is everyone else?
Mueller was back there, dragging Docks in the other direction, grunting (though she couldn’t hear the sounds, she could see it on his straining face) with the effort. Docks was apparently a lot heavier than he looked. It might have been all the blood soaked into his clothing adding to his weight.
Mueller was glancing over his shoulder, shouting, “Leo! Hartnett! Get over here! Get your asses over here!” even as he continued to desperately pull Docks with him, leaving behind a large trail of blood. So much blood that it was hard for Gaby to imagine it was all coming from one man. But maybe it wasn’t just one man. Maybe Docks had gotten the blood of his fellow Black Tiders and those dead Mercerians on him as he fled the horde of ghouls.
Mercerians…ghouls…
Jesus. How did they get down here? How did they find out about the tunnels?
“Leo! Hartnett!” Mueller was shouting. “Get your asses over here now. Now, now, now, goddammit!”
But Gaby didn’t wait for Leo and Hartnett to show up even though in the back of her mind she wondered what was keeping them. They hadn’t gone that far down C, had they? At least, not nearly far enough not to have heard all the shooting and come running. So what was keeping them?
She was already turning back around when she glimpsed Becker stumbling past her while at the same time struggling to jam a fresh magazine into his rifle. The magazine well, Gaby knew from experience, always seemed smaller than normal when you desperately needed to quickly reload.
“Changing!” Becker shouted.
“Go go go!” she shouted back.
She stepped forward, taking over his spot and almost slipping on a carpet of bullet casings that had turned the hard pavement into a moving rug. She managed to maintain her balance and looked forward, catching her breath
.
She wished she could have said that having already faced a similar horde of the undead back in Axton had prepared her for this, but it would have been a lie. The situation was similar, but her surroundings weren’t. There was something about the cramped spaces of an old and only recently unearthed bomb shelter that somehow made this worse.
Because it is worse.
It’s so much goddamn worse this time.
They filled up the hallway spaces as they struggled to get past one another, to be the first through the door. The only reason they hadn’t reached the opening yet was because of all the bodies in front of them—humans and ghouls—slowing them down.
But it wasn’t going to keep them away forever. Eventually they would overcome, even if they had to climb over one another. A couple were already scaling the walls, and she thought, Jesus Christ, I’ll never get used to seeing that!
Gaby opened fire, the M4 flicking shell casings everywhere—
Wait. Why aren’t they falling? Why the hell aren’t they falling?
She had shot one ghoul in the chest, and it was still coming.
She’d shot another in the head—leaving behind a hole big enough to shove her fist through—and it, too, was still moving, climbing over a now-foot-high pile of dead bodies in front of it.
A third ghoul took a round to the stomach and twisted slightly, but didn’t stop.
What’s happening? Why—
Then it hit her: The magazine she was using. It had come from one of the Mercerians they had killed in the alley.
The bullets don’t have silver in them. Jesus Christ, the Mercerian magazines don’t have silver in them!
“Becker!” Gaby shouted, even as she continued firing. They weren’t falling, but at least she seemed to be slowing them down.
Oh, who are you kidding? They’re not slowing down. You’re just annoying them!
She put two rounds into a ghoul’s shoulder and managed to chop off its right arm with a third, not that it seemed to care because it kept coming, using its leftover arm to climb over a mountain of dead even as blood sprayed from its stump.
Christ, there were so many bodies. Becker must have killed twenty or so before she had taken over for him. She could barely make out the corridor on the other side of the door. The darkness was suffocating enough, but now there were the mangled remains of ghouls everywhere to soak up all the light coming from their side of the tunnel.
Too many. Always too goddamn many!
She caught a lunging ghoul in the face, its nose shattering against the bullet impact and splattering the doorframe. The creature fell but quickly scrambled up, its feet slipping on a pool of blood. Its face was almost entirely gone, along with one eye, but it could still “see” her well enough—until three others buried it underneath their pistoning legs.
“Becker, goddammit!” Gaby shouted. “I need you! I need you right goddamn now!”
“Thought you’d never admit it,” Becker said just before he stepped up next to her and immediately began firing.
Unlike her volley, ghouls fell before Becker’s, including the three that had climbed over the one she’d dropped.
Almost immediately, five—six—a dozen took their places.
Pop-pop-pop! as Becker’s forefinger tugged on the trigger.
Again and again.
Pop-pop-pop!
And again…
Pop-pop-pop!
Gaby thought about throwing away her (useless) rifle and turning around and grabbing Mueller’s—that is, if he was still close enough for her to grab it. Mueller, like Becker, would be armed with silver bullets. Every Black Tider’s ammo had silver in them. Even if it weren’t mandatory, everyone knew better than to run around out here without the right kind of ammo.
Five years, and we’re still fighting ghouls. It’s not supposed to be like this!
But the Mercerians didn’t need the “right” kind of ammo. They had forged an alliance—at least, their leader Buck had—with the ghouls. All they had to do was wear the right clothes. In this case…
The gas mask. That’s why they’re wearing gas masks during the attack. Because they knew that sooner or later the ghouls would be called in.
Becker was still shooting, dropping ghouls as they lunged for the opening in front of him. They were almost there, almost through—
The door! The goddamn door!
“Becker!” Gaby shouted even as she slung her rifle and moved back toward him. “The door! We need to close the door!”
She slid past him and prayed he understood.
He did (Thank God!) and stopped firing just as she threw herself forward and into the door and pushed with everything she had. But it wasn’t nearly enough, because the door was heavy. Jesus Christ, it was heavy!
Then Becker was there beside her, and they grunted and pushed, boots stabbing against the floor for leverage. The door began to swing back toward its frame, but it wasn’t there yet and it didn’t seem like it would ever get there.
“Push!” she shouted.
“What do you think I’m doing?” he shouted back.
“Push harder!”
“Stop nagging me!”
She grinned, just as something flashed past the corner of her eye, but Gaby refused to abandon the door and kept pushing. They had to get it closed. It was the only way!
Becker remained right there beside her, also still pushing with everything he had.
Harder, harder, harder!
Then, finally, mercifully—
THOOM! as the door slammed into place.
Gaby grabbed the lever and jerked it upward to snap the latch into place, even as her mind screamed, You can’t lock it from this side, remember?
Becker had pushed off, shouting, “Hold the door!” before he spun around.
Gaby heard the bang! of a single gunshot and glanced back in time to see a ghoul collapsing to the floor, black blood pumping through a gaping hole in its chest.
She turned back to the door, both hands still clutching the lever. It was moving, trying to go back down, but she held on and refused to let it turn. She imagined one, two—more?—ghouls on the other side trying to yank the lever down to unlatch the door, but she wouldn’t allow it. It was a good thing the black eyes were weakened shells of their former human selves, and although the lever fought her, it couldn’t overcome her.
“Don’t let them open it back up,” Becker said beside her.
“Gee, thanks for the advice,” Gaby grunted back.
He grinned and put his SIG Sauer away, then unslung his rifle and grabbed a fresh magazine from one of his pouches and reloaded. He did the same to her rifle, dangling off one of her shoulders.
“Thanks,” Gaby said.
“Anytime.” Then, looking at the door, “Should I—”
“Yes,” she said before he could finish.
Becker leaned in closer and hovered both gloved hands over hers. “I swear I’m not trying to cop a feel here.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just do it, lover boy!”
He folded his hands over hers but didn’t tighten them right away. Instead, they passed the lever off between them, Gaby slipping her hands underneath his and Becker grabbing the lever and holding it in place. The metal piece had shuddered suddenly for a second or two, but it stopped as soon as Becker tightened both strong, large hands around it.
Gaby stepped back and sighed, then wiped at sweat dripping from her brow. Heavy black liquid dripped from her clothes and chin. She hadn’t realized they had gotten close enough to bleed on her, but now that she did, the smell was unbearable, and she wiped at the sludge and flicked them away.
“I guess now we know why they’re wearing gas masks,” Becker was saying. “Brings back some memories.”
“Not good ones,” Gaby said.
“Nope. Definitely not good ones. Looks like we should have kept some of the ones from the alley.”
“Yeah. I guess we should have.” She nodded at the door. “Is it…?”
&nbs
p; “Yup, it’s still moving,” Becker said. “How’d they get inside B anyway?”
Gaby shook her head. “I don’t know. I went through the place last week. There’s no other way in or out besides the two openings—the one at A and the one at C that we came through.”
“Nothing in B?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“There weren’t any other entrances or exits in the blueprints.” She paused for a moment. Then, “The ghouls on the other side of that door aren’t the only things that found a way in. I saw Mercerian bodies.”
“That means the shooting…”
“I think that was Pelfer and the others being surprised by Mercerians showing up in the tunnel. The ghouls came later, after the gunfight. Otherwise Docks wouldn’t have made it to the door in one piece with that horde in there.”
“What about A? Is it still safe?”
“That’s the least of our problems,” a voice said from behind them.
They looked back at Mueller, kneeling next to Docks’s body. Mueller hadn’t said what those other problems were, but Gaby didn’t have to think about it for very long.
Leo and Hartnett. Where the hell are Leo and Hartnett?
“Where are they?” she asked.
Mueller shook his head. “I don’t know. They never showed up. And I can’t reach them on the radio.”
“And just when things were starting to look up,” Becker said.
Gaby looked back at him. “Stay put.”
He gave her a wry grin. “Sure. No other place I’d rather be.”
“Just keep them on the other side of that door.”
“I’ll do my best, seeing as it’s also my skin on the line here.”
Gaby walked over to Mueller while looking past him and down the hallway. There were no signs of either Leo or Hartnett. There was no evidence that either man had even been there.
“How is he?” Gaby asked without taking her eyes off the corridor. If the Mercerians had found a way into B, a path that neither she nor any other Black Tiders knew about, what were the chances they wouldn’t also know about the warehouse?
“He’s gone,” Mueller said. “I thought I almost had him stabilized, but…” He shook his head.