by Sam Sisavath
She didn’t know whether to thank him or be annoyed, but she gave up trying to decide when she looked past him and down the stairs and saw a couple of ghouls already around the landing just below them.
Jesus. When did they get so fast? Have they always been this fast? Or were they just slow before because people were shooting at them?
“Fire in the hole!” Becker shouted.
Fire in the what? Gaby thought when the BOOM! of a frag grenade going off on the fourth floor just below them left her ears ringing.
Thank God she was in mid-stride, otherwise Gaby might have stopped when the stairwell started shaking around her. But she didn’t even though she wanted desperately to, the thoughts, Becker, you idiot! Did you just throw a grenade in the same stairwell we’re in? racing through her head.
When she glanced back, she had second thoughts about Becker’s idiocy. Maybe dropping a grenade into all of that wasn’t such a bad idea after all, because there were ghoul carcasses all over the landing and even more were plummeting down the open space to the first floor below.
Not that all the death and destruction stopped the ones still on their feet. They were still coming, moving like one continuous blob-like entity up the steps.
“Peters! Peters!” Becker was shouting. Gaby was going to ask why he was shouting out Peters’s name when she saw his hand on the radio Velcroed to his vest. “Friendlies coming up! I repeat: Friendlies coming up! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
Peters might have said something in reply, but Gaby couldn’t hear it over the pop-pop-pop! of Becker’s rifle firing. She was used to gunfire, but in the close confines of the stairwell, the rattle sounded more like thunder clapping over and over. Becker wasn’t even aiming and was just swinging the M4 back and forth while squeezing off shot after shot. But then he didn’t really have to aim because every bullet took out a ghoul, punched through its weak chest cavity, and took out another one behind it. Sometimes three went down with each shot.
But it wasn’t going to be enough, and Becker probably already knew that. He was just trying to buy them some more time. A few more seconds.
A few more precious seconds…
Then the roof access door was in front of her (Wait. When did we round the seventh floor?) and it was swinging open even before she threw herself toward it—
—and burst out into the cold Darby Bay night.
The pop-pop-pop of gunfire greeted her. For a split second, she thought Peters and whoever else was still on the rooftop with him hadn’t gotten Becker’s message and were shooting at them, but if that were the case, then who had opened the door for her?
And she was still alive despite gasping for breath against the cold night air that filled up her lungs like ice. There were indeed men in blue BDUs still on the rooftop, but they were either crouching or lying on their stomachs on the gravel floor, and instead of shooting at her, they were firing across the rooftop.
There was a muzzle flash from one of the rooftops across from them just before something zipped! past her head, so close that she could feel the heat. Gaby dropped to her knees, the Glock in her hand. She didn’t remember when she’d drawn it. Had she had it out the entire time she was racing up the stairwell—
The bam! of a metal door slamming shut behind her.
She spun around to find Becker and Peters bracing their bodies against the roof access door even as something (“Something?” You know exactly what those “something” is!) began hammering at it from the other side. The bang-bang-bang was different from below, when there was only a flimsy wooden door between the ghouls and them. The door that Becker and Peters were pushing against now was heavy and metallic, but it was still moving, shaking each time the creatures banged against it. Becker was fighting to maintain his grip on the lever, keeping it horizontal as it struggled to go vertical on him.
Bang-bang-bang!
Bang-bang-bang!
“What the fuck!” Peters shouted. She wasn’t sure if that was meant for her or Becker or anyone within earshot.
Gaby ran back to the two men and squeezed in between them. She turned and pushed her back against the cold metal door and could feel the thump-thump-thump from the other side, in tune to the loud bang-bang-bang!
She glanced over at Peters on her left. “We had nowhere else to go!”
“I can fucking see that!” Peters said, clenching his teeth. “I guess it’s better you than—”
A bullet pinged! off the metal slab barely a foot above Peters’s head, and he ducked instinctively as the round ricocheted into the dark night.
“Fuck me!” Peters shouted.
“What’s going on?” Becker asked.
“What do you think?” Peters switched up positions against the door, his boots sliding against the loose gravel. “Some assholes showed up on a building about half a block away and started taking potshots at us a few minutes ago. Got Miller before we knew where they were.” Peters nodded at a body lying on its stomach near the ledge to her right. “There’s at least one more still out there, but the fucker’s pretty good at hiding.”
The pop! pop! of Peters’s men firing across the rooftop in front of them—they were using single shots, probably to conserve ammo—mingled with the bang-bang-bang! of ghouls smashing into the door behind them, along with their haggard breathing, created an odd symphony of noises.
Gaby squinted across the skyline but couldn’t see anything that looked like a threat on any of the other rooftops. But she remembered the round that had almost taken her head off and knew that Peters’s men weren’t shooting at empty shadows.
“Can we lock this thing?” Becker was asking Peters.
“With what?” Peters said. “They don’t put locks on the outside of rooftop doors. The point is to keep people out.”
“Now you tell me,” Becker said.
There was a single purposeful pop!, and Gaby looked across the rooftops just in time to see a figure falling from the silhouette of a water tower across from them.
“Goddammit, Turner, you finally got the fucker,” Peters said.
One of the men lying on his stomach lifted his hand. “You’re welcome, boss.”
Bang-bang-bang! behind them.
Peters sighed. “As if things weren’t bad already, you guys had to bring this to me, too, huh?”
“Sorry,” Gaby said.
“Yeah, sorry,” Becker said.
Bang-bang-bang!
BANG-BANG-BANG!
Twenty-Four
Bang-bang-bang!
Bang-bang-bang!
They were striking the door over and over and over again, but they weren’t going to get out. The steel metal plate was already showing dents on this side, but it was holding, and it would continue to. It was too strong, too well-put together to collapse against even this kind of unrelenting assault. The ghouls were just flesh and bone. Even they couldn’t break down a metal door no matter how hard or long they tried.
Bang-bang-bang!
Bang-bang-bang!
Keep at it, boys, Gaby thought as she sat down and drank some water that Turner, the young man who had shot the sniper, offered to her.
There were six people on the rooftop with Peters, and they took turns holding the door in place to give Becker and Peters some rest. With the Mercerian sniper on the other rooftop taken care of and no more threats looming among the buildings around them, the team had gone back to their ledges to watch the carnage in the streets below unfolding. They had stopped firing down because there was no point anymore. Even if they wasted every round they had—which was already limited—they wouldn’t make even a tiny difference in whittling down the number of ghouls.
“Three more hours,” Becker said as he sat down on the gravel next to her. She handed him the bottle and he emptied it. “Give or take. We can spend all three hours up here. That door’s not going anywhere.”
“Morning sounds good,” Gaby said. “I just wish it’d get here sooner.”
“Amen to that.”
Becker grinned at her, and she returned it. Gaby didn’t stop the sudden rush of good feelings. She thought she was going to die so many times in the last few minutes—and truthfully had prepared herself for it—but now that they had secured themselves on the rooftop with a strong door between them and the ghouls, there was a sense of euphoria. A sense that they might just make it after all.
The bang-bang-bang continued behind her, but she didn’t pay any attention to it. Not really, anyway. Peters’s men were holding the door closed, and there were shooters around her watching the neighboring rooftops for more snipers.
Maybe, just maybe, she could survive this terrible, never-ending night after all.
Captain Optimism’s back, she thought, smiling to herself.
“What’re you smiling at?” Becker asked.
“Just looking forward to that date,” Gaby said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Why not?”
“I was hoping for more assurances than just a ‘why not,’ but hey, I’ll take what I can get.”
Gaby looked over at Peters, standing at a nearby ledge looking down at the streets with his night-vision binoculars.
“Did they make it?” Gaby asked. “Parrish and the civilians?”
Peters lowered his binoculars and nodded. “They did. Had to slug their way to get there with ghouls at their backsides and Buckies at their fronts, but they got there. The forward teams did a good job of securing the route. Those Warthogs wasting all those Buckies at the fake rallying point earlier helped.”
“Thank God.”
“So how do we get down from here?” Becker asked.
Peters made a face. “Get down?”
“Yeah. How do we get off the rooftop?”
“We don’t.”
“We don’t?”
“Kid, we’re seven floors up, and there are no ladders or catwalks to climb down. The closest building is that one behind us. Its rooftop is forty feet away with a twenty-foot drop. If you can survive that leap, I’ll write a book about you. It’s more likely you’ll break both legs and never walk again. That is, if you don’t die from the shock of breaking both legs and your spine snapping on impact.”
“Captain fucking Optimism, this guy,” Becker said to Gaby.
She smiled.
Peters glanced over at the door. “The only way down was through there. And, well, you kids ruined that.”
“Sorry, Peters,” Gaby said.
“You did what you had to, kid. I’m not blaming you.”
She watched Peters closely. He really didn’t look all that angry, almost as if he expected this. She wanted to ask him if he was ever going to leave the rooftop as Lara had ordered or if he and his men were always going to stay up here for as long as possible.
“Where’s the secondary location anyway?” Becker asked.
“A cement-making factory about five blocks from here,” Gaby said. “It’s got thick walls and an even thicker basement just in case they needed it.”
She thought about the civilians, the mothers and the daughters, the fathers and sons that had lost their city. Who knew where they had come from to settle here, only to lose their home a second time. She wondered if, in the days and weeks to come, they would blame Black Tide. Or Lara—
Lara.
She turned to Becker. “Lara.”
“Lara,” Becker said, immediately understanding her.
“What about Lara?” Peters asked.
Gaby exchanged a look with Becker before they stood back up. Becker pried his two-way radio from the Velcro and handed it to her before she even got the chance to ask for it.
Peters walked over to them as Gaby clicked the transmit lever and spoke into it. “Lara, can you hear me? This is Gaby. Please respond.”
She waited, as did Becker and Peters next to her.
The bang-bang-bang! from behind her was the only sound on the rooftop for the next five seconds. Gaby didn’t think she was even breathing.
She clicked the radio again. “Lara, come in. This is Gaby. Please respond.”
Another second of silence.
Bang-bang-bang!
Two seconds…
Bang-bang-bang!
Three…
Bang-ba—
The radio squawked, and she heard the voice she was waiting for. “I’m here.”
Becker and Peters sighed with relief. Even Turner, crouching at a nearby ledge, glanced over and smiled. A couple of men whose names she didn’t even know also turned around to listen.
“Gaby,” Lara said through the radio. Was she whispering? “I was afraid I wasn’t going to hear your voice again.”
“Are you okay?” Gaby asked. “You’re whispering.”
“We had to take shelter. The streets are cut off. Too many ghouls. They’re everywhere.”
Tell me about it, Gaby thought and said, “But you’re okay. You’re safe.”
“I don’t…” Lara paused. Then, “They’re inside the building with us. They’re searching…”
Becker and Peters exchanged a worried look, but both men kept silent.
“But are you all right?” Gaby asked.
“For now,” Lara said. “The situation’s fluid. But for now, we’re okay.” Lara went quiet again. Then, just as Gaby was about to speak, “Don’t ever do that again, Gaby.”
“Lara…”
“I mean it,” Lara said, the anger in her voice unmistakable even over the radio. “Don’t ever do that to me again. I don’t care what your reasons were. I know you thought it was the right thing, but never, ever do that to me again. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gaby said.
“Say it.”
“I promise never to do that again.”
“Good.” Then, “Where are you?”
“I’m on the rooftop with Peters.”
“He’s still alive?”
Peters chuckled. “Nice to be noticed.”
“You’re special, old timer,” Becker said.
“Mom always did say that.”
Gaby said into the radio, “We’re all still alive and kicking.”
“What’s that sound in the background?” Lara asked.
“Ghouls. They’re in the stairwell. They followed us up from the lobby. We barely got away.”
“But you did…”
“I’m a fast runner,” Gaby said. She glanced down at her watch. “It’ll be morning in three hours. Can you hide for that long?”
“That’s the plan,” Lara said. “Right now it’s just the black eyes. There’s a lot of them, but they’re stupid. We can—” Lara stopped in mid-sentence.
Gaby waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.
Five seconds…
Bang-bang-bang! from behind her.
Ten…
Bang-bang-bang!
Gaby pressed the transmit lever. “Lara. Are you still there?”
She gave it another five seconds.
On the sixth, “Lara. Please—”
“I’m here,” Lara said. It might have been Gaby’s imagination, but she swore Lara’s voice was even lower this time. She was already whispering before, but now it sounded as if she was barely speaking at all.
“What’s happening?” Gaby asked. “Are you in danger?”
“I—” Lara started but stopped again.
Bang-bang-bang!
Bang-bang-bang!
“Gaby,” Lara whispered through the radio. “It’s here. It’s in the building with us.”
“It?” What’s “it”—
The answer came in a flash, striking her like a lightning bolt.
“It’s here. It’s in the building with us.”
She could see the look on Becker’s and Peters’s faces next to her. They wanted desperately to ask what “it” was, but they didn’t. Instead, both men stood still and waited anxiously.
Gaby’s fingers were shaking when she pressed the transmit lever on the radio. “Lara, can you hide from it?”
She waited f
or an answer, but it didn’t come.
Bang-bang-bang! from behind her.
“Lara…”
Bang-bang-bang!
“Lara, answer me.”
Bang-bang-bang!
The radio squawked and they heard Lara’s voice, even lower than the last time (Is that possible?). “Gaby, I want you to promise me something else.”
“Anything,” Gaby said. She wanted desperately to reach across the radio waves to her friend, to grab onto her hand and hold on tight. “Anything, Lara. What is it?”
“When morning comes, I want you and the others to get off that rooftop and make your way to Parrish. Leave Darby Bay and regroup with our people. It can’t end here, Gaby. Do you understand? It has to keep going. We can’t let the sacrifices of the last five years be for nothing.”
“Lara…”
“You’ll have to lead them,” Lara continued. “You and Danny. You and Danny and Keo. The three of you can’t ever stop fighting. Do you understand? Do you hear me? Don’t ever stop fighting.”
“Lara, what are you saying?”
“Gaby,” her friend said. “You know I love you. And you’ve made me so proud these last few years.”
“Lara, don’t do this…”
“When you see him, tell Danny that I love him.” She paused again. But for just a second or two this time. “And when you see Keo, tell him… Tell him that I’m sorry. Tell him… If I could go back, I would have made different choices.”
“Lara, stay away from it. Hide. Don’t let it find you. Do you hear me? Lara. Don’t let it find you.”
She let go of the transmit lever and waited for a reply, but there wasn’t one.
A second…
Bang-bang-bang!
Two…
Bang-bang-bang!
Five…
Bang-bang-bang!
Ten…
“Lara,” Gaby said into the radio. “Can you hear me? Lara. Lara, goddammit, answer me.” Then, louder than she ever intended, “Lara!”
But there was no answer. There was just the silence on the rooftop and the bang-bang-bang! from behind her.