by Sam Sisavath
Gaby looked up as the renewed sounds of jet engines ripped across the night sky just before the KRA-THOOM! of a massive bomb falling and striking the field in front of her shook the world one more time. The BOOM-BOOM-BOOM that followed rattled the building underneath her, and they were so much closer this time that Gaby almost lost her balance, but someone grabbed her arm from behind first.
“Easy there, ma’am,” Becker said.
She gave him an annoyed—but not really—look. He smiled back.
Something flickered in the corner of her eye, and Gaby looked over in time to see an object arcing through the air. It had originated from a building about a hundred meters from their location and was headed for the open grass beyond. The object impacted the ground in front of a half-dozen or so ghouls that had broken free from the pack and were almost at the edge of the city. The resulting explosion sounded and looked insignificant against the death and destruction delivered by the A-10s earlier, but it still threw bodies into the air.
“Damn, when’d those fuckers get so close?” Peters was saying mostly to himself as he unslung his rifle and took a grenade round from his bandoleer and slid it into the M203 underneath the carbine.
She stepped closer to the ledge and peered down, and this time Gaby didn’t need night vision to see small individual ghouls racing between buildings, down streets, and through alleyways. It wasn’t the main force, but rather the faster ones that had managed to outdistance the wave still coming toward them.
An unrelenting ocean of dead things…
Gaby wasn’t the only person to see that some ghouls had made it into the city, because grenade rounds began launching to the left and right of her, the boom-boom-boom as they hit the streets below and jettisoning ghouls into the air echoing one after another. They would have sounded much louder, if not for the Warthog jet engines flashing across the horizon.
She pulled back and glanced over at Lara standing next to her. Her friend looked so tired, as if she’d been running a marathon all day and still hadn’t stopped. Gaby always thought that Lara had aged ten years in the last five, but maybe she was being overly generous. It might have been more like twenty.
“Lara,” Gaby said. “We have to go.”
Lara nodded and turned to Peters. “Use up all the ordnance you have and then get your men to the secondary location.”
Peters nodded, but for some reason Gaby didn’t completely believe him when he answered. “Yes, ma’am, we’ll be right behind you.” Then the older man stepped toward the ledge and looked for a second before pulling the trigger on his rifle.
Ploompt! as his 40mm round sailed through the air and boomed! in the street below. There was an explosion and a burst of gray clouds.
Gaby turned and followed Lara across the rooftop. Black Tiders were firing into the street around them, some raining grenade rounds but most shooting their rifles. The pfft-pfft! of suppressed gunfire were now being joined by the pop-pop-pop of unsuppressed weapons. It wasn’t just coming from their rooftop but also the ones around them. Muzzle flashes lit the darkness up and down the city, and Gaby thought about the last time she’d seen that, when all of this began not more than six hours ago.
Another lifetime now.
But just as with the Warthogs and all the firepower they could bring to bear on the battlefield, she knew that men shooting from rooftops wasn’t going to be nearly enough to help them win tonight.
“It wants us,” Keo had said. “Everyone who was down there, underneath Houston when Will took out Mabry. Me, Danny, Gaby, and Hanson. Everyone else who was there that day is dead. It’s just the four of us left.”
She glanced toward the field beyond—just as Peters fired again, the ploompt! of his M203 impossibly muffled against all the gunfire around them—and wondered if it was out there.
The blue-eyed ghoul.
It.
The same one that had been chasing Keo since Winding Creek. It had pursued him to Axton and then underneath Cordine City.
“It wants us…”
Was it out there, she wondered, moving among the innumerable hordes coming toward the city right now? Or maybe it was already here, dodging 40mm grenades and bullets in the streets.
“Everyone who was there that day is dead…”
Her heart hammered against her chest as she turned around—
“…It’s just the four of us left…”
—and slipped through the stairwell door, thankful to leave the darkness behind…if only temporarily.
Twenty-Two
Where the hell is morning?
She glanced down at her watch and cursed under her breath.
Three more hours. Three more damn hours. She wondered if they were going to last just one more hour.
Captain Optimism, remember? a voice that sounded very much like Will’s said from somewhere in the back of her mind.
Sorry, Will, but I can’t even pretend right now.
Lara was walking briskly in front of her and talking on the radio at the same time as they descended down the stairwell. “Parrish, how’s it going down there?”
“We’re in transit,” Parrish answered.
“Good. We’re coming down now.”
“I’m sending a team to intercept you in the lobby.”
“We’ll catch up to you as soon as we can. Don’t wait for us. The priority are those people.”
“Understood.”
Lara’s security detail consisted of two men in front of her and two more behind Gaby. They were wearing generic Black Tide BDUs and didn’t have names on their uniforms, but she had overheard Becker calling the big redhead up ahead Green. She had no idea who the other one was, or the one behind her with Becker. She hadn’t asked. Names didn’t seem all that important at the moment.
There was also a part of her that didn’t want to know. She thought about Goldman, about Mueller and the others down in the tunnel. Knowing their names hadn’t done them any good. The next thirty minutes were going to consume more lives, and the chances of everyone in the stairwell with them surviving it was…slim.
Captain Optimism’s definitely taken a hike tonight.
They rounded the fifth floor. Unlike the last time when they walked up the seven floors, there were no Black Tiders to greet them at the landings. They were either all downstairs or already moving with Parrish’s evacuation. It was dark inside the stairwell, but not suffocating. The air was stale and clung to her skin, but she still preferred it over being out in the open.
She could hear shooting through the walls—the soft pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire and the recurring thooms of grenades exploding in the streets. It reminded her of sitting in a movie theater and listening to an action flick from the screen next door. It would have been easy to ignore if she allowed herself to, but Gaby didn’t, because as long as there was shooting, there was danger.
“It wants us. Everyone who was down there, underneath Houston when Will took out Mabry. Me, Danny, Gaby, and Hanson. Everyone else who was there that day is dead. It’s just the four of us left.”
Keo’s words and the way he had said them as they sat together in the room—just her and Lara and him—gave her goosebumps even now. She couldn’t forget them, and she couldn’t stop replaying them over and over in her head. Especially the last part. That, more than the rest, only got louder with time.
“Everyone else who was there that day is dead. It’s just the four of us left.”
Just the four of them left now. Her, Danny, Hanson, and Keo.
And Keo was in Fenton. God only knew if he was even still alive considering everything that had happened tonight. Was Buck even there? Or was Fenton just another trap, like the last five years had been for Lara?
She remembered talking to Keo about “sanctioning” Buck if he got the chance, and Lara disagreeing. Not just that, but ordering them not to even entertain the idea.
Gaby wondered if her friend had changed her mind after tonight.
As if she could read Gaby’s thought
s, Lara glanced over. “When we get downstairs, we need to locate Hanson. If it’s out there…”
Lara let the rest go unsaid, but Gaby understood everything, even who it was. There was only one it that mattered tonight. It.
“It wants us. Everyone who was down there, underneath Houston when Will took out Mabry…”
She shivered slightly and hoped Becker and the other guy behind her didn’t notice. But they probably did, given how closely they were trailing behind her and Lara—
The boom! of something exploding below them—either inside the lobby of the apartment building or very close by, echoed through the stairwell. Gaby and Lara exchanged a quick look before they took another floor landing in a rush.
Lara’s radio squawked, and they heard Peters’s voice: “Lara, come in.”
“What’s happening, Peters?” Lara said into the radio.
“They’re at the warehouse. I repeat: They’re at the warehouse.”
Already? Gaby thought as they all but jumped down onto the first floor and headed for the stairwell door.
“We’re almost at the lobby,” Lara said. “Get down here now. We’re evacuating the building.”
“Be right down, ma’am,” Peters said, but like last time, Gaby didn’t quite believe him. She didn’t know why, but the way he had spoken…
What are you doing, Peters?
But she had no time to worry about Peters as they pushed through the door and into the lobby. There was debris on the floor, and glass crunched underneath Gaby’s boots as she stepped over them and toward the front doors. An explosion had landed too close to the front of the building and shattered the glass walls, throwing shards all the way across the floor. Even without the wall, it was still difficult to make out the sidewalk and streets outside. The lights were gone, either blown away by the same explosion that had taken out the windows or by some other means.
Two figures abandoned a patch of shadows near the front of the lobby and rushed over to them. Gaby recognized the lead man as Kennison, one of Parrish’s. He and his partner (Gaby didn’t know his name) were both carrying M4s with M203 grenade launchers attached. They had left two men behind near the blown glass walls, both men crouching with M240 machine guns.
The distant roar of car engines managed to infiltrate the pop-pop-pop of small arms fire and explosions coming from all around them. The cacophony of different sounds reminded her of when all of this first began almost five hours ago.
“Ma’am, we have to go now if we wanna catch up to the captain,” Kennison said.
Lara nodded. “Then let’s go.”
Kennison turned and shouted, “We’re moving, ladies!”
The two at the front of the lobby stood up but never turned away from the exposed streets beyond.
Behind her, Becker said, “Paul, Green, up front. Chambers, you’re with me.”
The two men who had led the way down the stairwell rushed forward to join the two with the MGs. The one behind her and Becker stayed where he was.
Kennison led their small party to the front doors, which were still intact despite the glass walls around them having been destroyed. Gaby stayed alongside Lara while Becker and Chambers, along with Kennison’s partner, followed closely behind them.
“Captain left a truck behind for us,” Kennison said. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but we should all fit.”
“Should?” Lara said.
“Should,” Kennison said with a shrug. “If not, then someone’s running.”
“Swell,” Becker said softly behind her.
A massive BOOM! echoed from outside. It was so close that the resulting aftershock nearly knocked them off their feet. Gaby grabbed Lara’s arm to keep her from falling—or maybe it was the other way around—even as the mailboxes on the wall to her left rattled uncontrollably, some of the lids flipping open.
“What the hell was that?” Kennison’s partner asked.
“That was a big ass bomb that someone dropped way too close to the city,” Becker said.
It had to be one of the Warthogs. The fact that they had released a big ordnance this close to the buildings—so close to them—meant a large enough force of ghouls had made it into the city, whereas before there were just individual frontrunners.
“They’re in the city,” Gaby said, almost gasping the words out.
“Let’s go!” Lara shouted even as they began running across the lobby.
The two men with machine guns, along with Paul and Green, were waiting for them up ahead.
“Gaby,” Lara said as she looked over at her in midstride. “Don’t leave my side. Understand? Don’t do anything stupid.”
Stupid? Gaby thought. What’s she talking about?
But she was looking forward as they jogged and never got the chance to say her question out loud because one of Becker’s men, Paul, had just stepped outside through one of the broken windows when a black shape slammed into him and knocked him sideways, his rifle flipping into the air.
Gaby slid to a stop, as did Lara next to her and everyone else around them. For the next few seconds, they watched as a ghoul picked itself up from the sidewalk and pounced on Paul even as the man screamed and opened fire, the bang! bang! of his handgun echoing loudly outside.
Too loudly.
The creature fell, but even as it did, two—three—a dozen appeared out of the darkness and swarmed Paul as he was struggling to get up. Bang-bang-bang! as Paul kept firing even as he disappeared under the pile of black flesh and clacking bones.
“Here we go,” Gaby said. Then, louder (on the verge of shouting), “Here we go!”
Brap-brap-brap! as one of Kennison’s men opened up with his MG. A second later, his companion was firing, too, the two men standing side by side, unleashing hell into the street outside. Green, the big redhead, started shooting with his own rifle, but his purposeful pop-pop was lost in the barrage of machine gun fire.
Bullet casings flicked through the air and clink-clink-clinked off the smooth linoleum lobby floor in waves even as dark bodies on the sidewalk jerked and fell as silver bullets punched into them over and over again.
Kennison turned and screamed at them, loud enough to be heard over the roar of machine gun fire. “Head for the back door! We can use the back alleys!”
“What about the vehicle Parrish left behind?” Becker asked.
Kennison shook his head in response, but Gaby was already looking past him and at the street beyond as the darkness came alive. Endless pairs of dark black eyes emerged one by one, dotting the wall of black outside. They raced forward, oblivious to the 5.56 rounds tearing into the ghouls in front of them, splattering thick, wet blood everywhere.
“Back door it is,” Becker said behind her.
Gaby turned with Lara, and even as they did, their eyes met and she wondered if her own face was as terrified as her friend’s at the moment. Lara had always had to put up a façade—not for herself, but for everyone around her. But at that very second, Gaby saw fear in Lara’s face for the first time in a long time.
Then they were running back across the lobby even as the brap-brap-brap continued unabated behind them. There was so much shooting now that Gaby couldn’t make out any other sounds from outside the apartment. There was just the M240s firing nonstop behind them, and all she could think was, How long can they keep it up? How long before their ammo runs out and they have to change? How long—
Pop-pop-pop! from in front of her, and before Gaby could ask what was happening, Becker and Chambers were suddenly standing instead of running, and firing at a stream of ghouls coming out of the back hallway.
Coming out of the back hallway.
Oh…
The same corridor they were running for was now full of twisting black forms. They were crushed into the tight space and were crawling on top of one another’s heads and shoulders to get through.
…fuck.
“Changing!” Becker shouted.
Gaby stepped forward until she was beside him and opened fire
with her M4. She squeezed off one burst after another, sending three rounds at a time into the narrow confines of the back hallway with every trigger pull. Her rifle didn’t have lights, but she didn’t need them to see the deformed figures scrambling to exit the hallway. There was enough moonlight to see with, and where there wasn’t, her mind filled in the rest.
They fell in rows against hers and Chambers’s bullets. One second they were on their feet and running, charging with wild abandon, and the next they were smashing into the floor, black blood splashing the tiles. And still the others kept coming. The only reason they weren’t already in the lobby was because there were so many of them that they were literally packed into the hallway like sardines.
Sardines again. So many sardines tonight!
Even as she fired, picking off the ones that had managed to break out of the corridor, Gaby could still hear the brap-brap-brap of machine gun fire behind her. The continuous MG blasting away back there was the most reassuring thing she could hope for—
“Changing!” Chambers shouted as he stepped back and reloaded.
Becker quickly took his place, his rifle spitting fire next to her. “Get her out of here, Kennison!”
“Where?” Kennison shouted from somewhere behind Gaby. “There’s nowhere to go! They’re in the streets!”
“Up!” Gaby shouted. The sound of her own voice surprised her but she was turning, looking back at Lara and Kennison, even as she ejected a magazine and groped for a replacement. “We have to go up back to Peters! It’s the only way left!”
Lara was reloading her own Glock as she shouted back, “If we go up, there’s no way down! Not for three more hours!”
Shit. She’s right.
She’s right!
Gaby looked past Lara at the ghouls appearing in the streets outside the building, as if the night itself was spitting them out one by one. The creatures were bounding up the sidewalk and rushing through the broken windows only to fall against the onslaught of silver bullets. More were dropping in the streets from rounds raining down from the sky. She was sure that was Peters and Overwatch.