by Sam Sisavath
Bang-bang-bang!
Bang-bang-bang!
Gaby ran to the ledge and looked down.
They were still out there, darting in and out of the moonlight. Two here, ten there—a hundred more farther down the street. They were everywhere, and the ones in the building with them right now weren’t even all of them. It wasn’t even close to being all of them. They were scouring the city, racing in and out of buildings.
Searching, searching…
“It’s here. It’s in the building with us.”
“Gaby.” Becker’s voice behind her, as if coming from the other side of the planet. “Are you okay? What just happened?”
She didn’t answer him. She was too busy thinking, looking for that window of opportunity that Will always told her about.
“Buckle up, Buttercup. This is no time to wallow in your failures. Put on your big girl pants and focus. Stay alive and look for your windows of opportunity. And there will be opportunities; you just have to see it. So pay attention.”
The bang-bang-bang! from behind her took away some of her ability to concentrate.
Bang-bang-bang!
It was there, somewhere. She just had to see it.
Bang-bang-bang!
She just had to see it…
Bang-bang-bang!
She turned around and looked past Becker and Peters and at the door. Two of Peters’s men were holding it closed, but she could see it moving, trembling against their bodies.
“Gaby,” Becker said. Then, when she still didn’t acknowledge him, he stepped in front of her until he was the only thing she could see. “Gaby!”
She looked at him. “Joe.”
He smiled. “That’s the first—”
“We have to open the door.”
“What? What door?”
“The door,” she said, before walking around him and toward the roof access door.
Peters stepped into her path. “What are you talking about, kid? Open what door?” He glanced over his own shoulder at where she was staring, then back at her. “That door? You want to open that door?”
“Yes.” She fixed the older man with a hard stare. “It’s the only way.”
“The only way for what?”
“To save Lara,” Gaby said.
“Are you crazy? Is that it? Did you hit your head on the way up here?” Peters asked when she was done telling them what they had to do in order to save Lara.
“It’s the only way,” Gaby said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s found her!”
Peters didn’t respond to that. Maybe he didn’t know how to put his doubts into words. Or maybe he was still trying to figure out who it was.
No, that last part wasn’t true. Peters had been around. He knew about blue-eyed ghouls. He had seen firsthand what they could do. And he was also in Axton when Blue Eyes attacked them.
“Are you sure it’s the only way?” Peters asked. “Because you have to be sure, kid.” He glanced around at his men before returning to her. “You have to be sure. One-hundred percent, because this is a one-way street, kid. We’re not coming back from this. So I ask you again. Are you sure?”
She nodded without hesitation. “It’s the only thing I’m sure about right now, tonight. That, and we don’t have a lot of time. It’s the same creature that’s been hunting Keo, and it’s in that building with her. Sooner or later, it’s going to find her. Did you hear Lara’s voice? She knows it, too. You know it, too, Peters.”
“But you have to be sure, kid.”
“I am.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Yeah, that about sums it up, Gaby thought.
Peters looked around at the faces of his men again. They stared back at him. All of them. They’d heard everything, listened intently, and no one had said a word. They were trusting Peters to put their doubts into words, and he had.
And now she wondered if they believed her. Did Peters?
“I’m not going to speak for everyone,” the oldest man on the rooftop by far said. “I can’t do that. I don’t have the right.”
Bang-bang-bang! as the creatures on the other side continued their assault.
“You know what this means,” Peters said. “You know what will happen if we go through with it. If this works the way she says it will. You’ve heard the stories. Some of you have even seen them for yourselves. I’m here to tell you that it’s all true. Everything you’ve heard about the blue eyes. They’re dangerous. More than you’ll ever know. But you will know if we go through with this, and, God help me, it actually works the way she says it will.”
His men didn’t say anything. Gaby couldn’t read their faces; she didn’t know them well enough to know what each person was thinking at the moment.
“But you also know what will happen if we don’t do anything,” Peters continued. “Having said that, I’m not going to make the choice for everyone—”
“It’s Lara,” Turner said.
He had said it so matter-of-factly that it caught Gaby off guard.
The truth was, she was expecting more of a fight. Maybe not from Peters, who had seen what a blue-eyed ghoul could do with his own eyes, but with the others.
“It’s Lara,” another one of Peters’s men said.
“Yeah.” Peters nodded. “It’s Lara.”
Becker, who had been standing quietly next to Gaby, finally spoke. “Are we being serious right now? You guys are actually considering this?”
“She’s right,” Peters said. “If it’s in there with Lara, it’ll find her. This might be the only play we have left.”
“Oh, hell,” Becker said. “You’re both nuts.”
Gaby ignored him and pursed a smile at Peters. “It’ll be dangerous.”
“Of course it will,” Peters said, turning around and looking at the roof access door as the ghouls on the other side crashed into it—bang-bang-bang!—over and over again.
Bang-bang-bang!
Bang-bang-bang!
Peters looked back at her. “All right, kid. It’s your play. So call it.”
Twenty-Five
Bang-bang-bang!
“Ready?”
Bang-bang-bang!
“No.”
Bang-bang-bang!
“Well, you should be ready.”
Bang-bang-bang!
“I’m not.”
Bang-bang-bang!
“You know why you’re not?”
Bang-bang-bang!
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
Bang-bang-bang!
“Because this is stupid.”
She grinned back at Peters. He had a point.
“Okay,” Gaby said.
“Okay?” Peters said.
“Okay,” Gaby said again.
“Okay?” Becker said.
Gaby closed her eyes.
One second…
Lara.
Two…
No way I’m losing you.
Three…
Not anymore. I’m not losing anyone anymore.
Four…
“Gaby?” Becker’s voice. “You ready?”
Five…
She opened her eyes. “Do it!”
And they did.
Or Becker did. He was the one with both hands clutching the lever that kept the roof access door closed. Turner and another one of Peters’s men, Bannion, had their shoulders pushing against the steel plate. When she shouted “Do it!” Turner and Bannion pulled back slightly, while Becker let go of the lever and sidestepped out of the way.
The door swung open but not completely. It was just enough of a sliver for one, two—five ghouls to slip through the crack.
“Slam it! Slam it!” Peters shouted.
Turner and Bannion tried, but there were too many ghouls on the other side pushing back against them, and they couldn’t get the door to swing fast enough—
One—two—three more ghouls slipped through the crack.
Shit. Ma
ybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
But there was no going back now, and Gaby tightened her grip around the handle of the knife even as the pop-pop-pop of gunfire rang out. Peters’s other men were shooting the first five ghouls that had made it out. It wasn’t much of a challenge. The creatures simply ran at the closest figure, which meant Daniels, Jerry, and the only woman in the group, Wasserman—all three of whom were standing between Gaby and the door.
The ghouls fell when shot, and one of the bullets drilled right through a weakened nightcrawler’s body and almost hit Bannion as it pinged! off the door two inches above his head.
The door!
Peters had thrown himself into the door to help Bannion and Turner, and they pushed and pushed until—bam! as it slid into place. Peters grabbed the handle and yanked it down, putting all his weight on it, and was on his knees when the lever finally locked into place.
“Gaby!” Becker shouted. He was standing next to her with a handgun, watching as the remaining two ghouls made it past Peters’s men and charged at them.
“Remember the plan!” Gaby shouted back.
Becker didn’t answer. He was too busy shooting one of the ghouls as it broke away from the other and lunged at him. The creature took the slug in the chest and flopped to the graveled floor.
The last one was almost on top of Gaby when she sidestepped and lopped off its extended left hand at the elbow. The ghoul flopped to the floor next to her, but unlike Becker’s, it was already scrambling back on its feet. It was still very much alive, just as it was supposed to be. The blade of the knife she had gripped in her hand had no traces of silver, and all it did, from what she could tell, was piss off the monster.
The ghoul was rising back to its full height—which was no more than five feet because of its deformed spine—when Gaby took a step toward it and severed its head at the neck with one arcing swing of the large combat knife.
The head bounced across the rooftop away from her. Gaby started moving toward it, but she wasn’t going to be fast enough. It was ten feet from the ledge and rolling, rolling toward the empty air—
“I got it, I got it!” Becker shouted as he lunged after the head.
Gaby didn’t get a chance to see if he did “got” it, because the headless body of the ghoul she’d decapitated was still moving toward her. Gaby drew her sidearm and shot it, her bullet punching through the flimsy chest cavity and vanishing into the night air. That did it, and the creature dropped to the floor and stopped moving.
She quickly sought out Becker. He was next to the ledge, with one leg dangling off it while holding the severed head in his hand.
Gaby ran over and pulled him back to safety. Becker gave her a relieved look. He had one finger in the ghoul’s left eye, and black liquid oozed out of the socket and dripped on the rooftop floor as Becker stood up.
“Jesus Christ, that was close,” Becker said.
Gaby stared at the head, and it peered back at her with its one good right eye. Its jaw opened wide, revealing rows of jagged yellow and brown teeth glistening with saliva. It was very much “alive,” and it wanted her. Badly.
“Here you go,” Becker said and held the head out toward her. “I bet this isn’t the first time you got head on a first date.”
Gaby smiled. “It’s not our first date yet.”
“Pre-first date, then.”
She took the head from him, holding it with both hands, her palms against its cheeks and away from its snapping mouth. It tried to bite her, but it had no leverage and couldn’t turn its head. Gaby walked it over to a safer spot on the rooftop and held it at chest level.
She stared into its remaining eye and tuned out the bang-bang-bang of ghouls slamming into the access door behind her.
Bang-bang-bang!
The creature peered back at her, jaw moving, viscous liquid dripping from its bottom row of teeth.
Bang-bang-bang!
“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 thought about that night at the farmhouse, over five years ago, and what had happened when Will and Danny killed the blue-eyed ghouls.
“It wants us…”
She leaned forward until there was only half a foot between her and the creature. Its slobbering increased and its jaw snapped harder, with more urgency. She imagined Peters and Becker and the others watching behind her, probably trying to decide if she was crazy and if all of this madness had been for nothing.
Gaby didn’t let any of that stop her, and she locked stares with the creature’s remaining right eye—
Its mouth stopped moving, and the ghoul’s face became placid. The change was sudden and complete, as if some invisible mask had fallen over it.
Then the creature’s nose began twitching.
It was sniffing her.
Gaby smiled as she remembered something else Keo had said to her—and only to her: “It smelled it on me. The fact that I was there. Under Houston that day. I don’t know how; I don’t know how any of it works. But it knew I was there just by smelling me.”
“Yeah, I was there,” Gaby said. Her voice was calm. Amazingly calm. “You can smell it on me, can’t you? Houston. The tunnel. The end of everything you hold dear. The end of him.”
The ghoul’s face was almost serene as it stared back, and Gaby recognized something she hadn’t seen a long time in an undead’s eye: Intelligence.
“I was there,” she said. “With Keo. With the others. We cut through hundreds of your kind, and you couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Where were you? Were you even there? Did you hear him scream at the end? I did. It was pathetic.”
Gaby kneeled down and rested the head on its neck against the gravel floor. It continued watching her with that one remaining eye. The mouth moved as if it wanted to talk but couldn’t remember how to make words.
“Come and get me…” Gaby said.
She drew her gun, the one with silver bullets in the magazine, and pointed it at the creature’s eye.
“…if you can,” Gaby said, and fired.
The bullet struck the creature’s right eye and easily penetrated its skull and dug into the rooftop behind it. There was a burst of black liquid, but everything else was anticlimactic.
“Did it work?” Becker asked, walking up behind her. He was wiping traces of black goo from his fingers.
Gaby looked over. “Did it bite you?”
He shook his head and made a “hook” with his fingers. “Got it in the eye socket.” Then, nodding at the unmoving head, “So did it work?”
“It should,” Gaby said.
“‘Should?’”
“That’s how their hive mind works. The blue eyes can overtake the black eyes, control them like puppets. I’ve seen it before,” she added, remembering that night at an airport hangar five years ago. “And there’s just one blue eyes out there that we know of, in the same city as us.” She stood up and nodded, as confident as she’d been all night. “Yeah, it got the message. I’m sure of it.”
Peters walked over. “Let’s hope you’re right, kid, because we took a hell of a big risk—”
Gaby’s radio squawked, and before she could unclip it, Lara’s voice came through the speakers: “Gaby. Come in.”
“Lara,” Gaby said into the radio. “Are you okay?”
“It left. Gaby, it left,” Lara said.
“What did?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer. Maybe she just needed to hear Lara say it to be absolutely certain.
“Blue Eyes,” her friend said. “It was here—I swear it knew exactly where we were hiding—and then it was gone. It left, and it took all the black eyes with it.”
Gaby exchanged a glance with Becker and Peters. Both men gave her shocked I can’t believe that worked looks in return.
She hurried over to the nearest ledge even as she press
ed the transmit lever. “Are you safe, Lara? What’s your situation?”
“For now,” Lara said.
“Can you move? Can you get out of there in case it comes back?”
“I don’t know. It’s not just ghouls we have to worry about. Kennison says he’s seen multiple Mercerian patrols in our area.”
Gaby stepped onto the ledge and looked down. She wasn’t quite sure what she was feeling as she watched the swarm of black flesh and domed heads appearing out of nearby alleys and converging toward their building. Toward her.
I guess it really did work, she thought, even as she wondered if it was down there. The blue-eyed ghoul. It. The creature that had been stalking Keo since Winding Creek and was here now, in Darby Bay with them.
“Gaby,” Lara said through the radio.
“I’m still here,” Gaby said.
“What did you do?”
Gaby smiled. Of course Lara would figure it out. She was Lara, after all. The smartest, bravest woman Gaby had ever known.
You’d be so proud of her, Will.
“I didn’t do anything,” Gaby lied.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Lara said.
“I…”
“Gaby, what did you do?”
She sighed and didn’t answer right away. She was aware of Becker’s presence behind her along with the persistent bang-bang-bang against the door farther back.
She clicked the radio. “I did what I had to, Lara.”
“Oh, Gaby,” Lara said.
Gaby smiled. It came naturally and she didn’t fight it, even as she watched the creatures continue to disappear one by one by one into the lobby below her. How many more bodies could they possibly squeeze into the seven floors, she wondered.
“It’s not over yet,” Gaby said into the radio. “Peters and Becker and the others are still up here with me. We have one last card to play.”
“Gaby…”
“Stay safe, and I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Gaby, don’t—” Lara started to say, but Gaby switched the radio off before she could finish.
Becker was standing behind her with his hands on his waist when she turned around. “So I guess it worked?”
She nodded. “It worked. They’re coming. All of them. And it’s going to be among them.”