by Sam Sisavath
“Rachel,” Will said, “we’re not your enemy. If they get through that door—”
“Give them back their stuff,” she said to Milch and Eaton before he could finish.
“Thank you,” Will said.
“You’re definitely going on my Christmas list now,” Danny added.
Rachel grunted before turning her full attention back to the door up the stairs. “Don’t make me regret this.”
Milch and Eaton vanished into the darkness before coming back with Will’s and Danny’s M4A1s and gun belts. Will took them eagerly, as did Danny. He felt instantly whole again with the extra weight of the pouches, spare magazines, and the cross-knife in its sheath around his left thigh.
“What about our packs?” Will said to Eaton. “The radio’s in one of them.”
Eaton glanced back into the shadows. “They’re back there somewhere.”
“We need them.”
“Not my problem,” Milch said before turning back to the door.
Will exchanged a look with Danny.
“The service in this place sucks,” Danny said. “I’m definitely complaining on the comment card.”
Will started to move toward the back of the basement when above them the noise had increased and the soft, barely audible thump-thump-thump became noticeably faster and seemed to be growing in volume. That stopped him in his tracks and he gripped the rifle, turning to face the door.
What the hell are they doing out there?
He knew for a fact the creatures weren’t banging on the metal slab without a reason. Not with the blue-eyed ones guiding them. So what was it, then? How did they plan to get inside?
“What about the side door?” Will asked.
“What about it?” Rachel said.
“There’s one, right? That’s how you got in here before us.”
“Yeah.”
“We might have to use it.”
“You don’t think there are more of them waiting out there?”
“Probably, but it’s a better option than facing what’s going to be coming through this door.”
“Assuming they get through.”
“Listen to them,” Will said. “They’re going to get through. They’re just getting warmed up.” He glanced at his watch: 2:16 A.M. “And they have hours on their side.”
“You’re a warm bowl of optimism, aren’t you, buddy?” Danny said.
“If we have to, we’ll use the side door,” Rachel said.
BOOM!
They all took an involuntarily step back from the stair landing. It wasn’t the same noise they had been hearing for the last few minutes. No. This was a single blow. Heavier, stronger, and more damaging. Will had become used to the rhythmic pattern of the ghouls slamming their useless flesh against a door, and this wasn’t it.
This was something else. Something more intense.
“Sounds metal,” Danny said.
“Yeah,” Will nodded.
“That all you got?”
“Yup.”
“You’re useless.”
“I try.”
“Shut up,” Rachel said, annoyed.
Danny mouthed at Will, “I blame this all on you.”
“We’re going to die tonight,” Will mouthed back.
“Captain fucking Optimism. I’m telling Lara.”
Will grinned.
“Tommy, go see if you can hear anything happening at the side door,” Rachel said.
Tommy rushed off into the darkness. The fact that people could disappear and reappear without warning was a bit disconcerting to Will, especially since he had zero visibility outside the small pool of light provided by the single LED lamp.
BOOM!
“Definitely metal,” Danny said.
“Let’s find out for sure,” Will said.
He jogged up the stairs, where he could still see the doorframe trembling in the aftermath of the last blow just seconds ago. Whatever they were using out there was definitely heavy and doing tremendous damage. He hadn’t been counting the seconds between the impacts, but it sounded like every ten seconds.
Which was just about—
BOOM!
Every inch of the door shook, and the brick wall surrounding it threatened to come unglued at any second. And there—a noticeable indentation had appeared at the side of the door, just over where the lever and locking mechanism were.
Footsteps behind him before Rachel’s and Danny’s breaths hit him in the back of the neck.
“Holy shit,” Danny said, staring at the indentation.
“What the hell is that?” Rachel asked, out of breath.
“They’re using some kind of battering ram,” Will said. “It’s the blue-eyed ghouls. They’re running the show out there.”
“Blue-eyed—” Rachel started to say.
BOOM!
All three of them took a step back as another indentation materialized in the door, very close to the first one. It sounded as if the creatures were literally driving whatever was on the other side into the door with great force, raining one concentrated, massive blow at a time every ten seconds.
“They’re going to cave the lock in,” Will said. “The door won’t hold for long after that.”
They hurried back down the stairs just as Tommy reappeared in the light.
“Nothing,” Tommy said. “I didn’t hear anything on the other side.”
“Are you sure?” Rachel asked.
“I’m telling you, there’s nothing out there—”
BOOM!
Will swore the entire basement vibrated for a good five seconds afterward that time.
“We gotta split,” Bratt said, his gravel voice cutting through the momentary silence. “The shock troops are coming. That’s them out there. We gotta go now.”
Will exchanged a quick look with Danny, who nodded back.
“Rachel,” Will said. “He’s right. We gotta go.”
“The side door?” she said, looking uncertainly at him.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll never survive out there.”
“We’ll have a better shot out there than down here when they start coming through that door.”
“Not much better…”
BOOM!
“Better than down here,” Will said, “trapped in this one big room with nowhere to go.”
“The door will hold,” she said, looking back up the stairs.
Will could tell he wasn’t going to get through. Maybe it was fear, or determination, or just simple human stubbornness (he knew a little bit about that last one), but he wasn’t going to budge her. She had decided, made her choice, and she was going to live (die) with it.
“It’ll hold,” she said again.
Another BOOM! blasted through the entire basement.
They spun around back to the stairs almost as one just as the metal door flew wide open and a burst of cold, rancid air flooded inside.
The first ghoul raced in, its bones clacking loudly.
Rachel, Eaton, and Milch opened fire and the creature’s forward momentum was stopped by a hail of bullets tearing into it, ripping away flesh and revealing bleach-white bones underneath. Then they lost sight of the ghoul because the black ocean pouring in through the open door swallowed the lone creature up and flooded down the stairs in a quivering obsidian tide.
“Go go go!” Will shouted.
Danny was already running, Tommy right behind him, when Will opened fire on the stairs.
Silver bullets punched through weak flesh and ricocheted off bones. Ghouls fell, flopping down the stairs, while others threw the dead ones over the banisters to make way for more to get down faster.
“Rachel!” Will shouted.
It didn’t do any good. He didn’t even think she heard him over the roar of blazing gunfire in the tight confines of the basement. Bullet casings sprayed around her and Bratt and Milch and Eaton, the clink-clink-clink of empty brass almost as loud as the unrelenting boom of assault rifles firing on full-auto.
Will turned and fled.
He darted into the darkness, guessing (praying) at the direction of the side door, using where he had last seen Tommy going and coming out of as a marker. Then he saw moonlight spilling through a rectangular hole in the wall and ran toward it.
Screams erupted behind him. Men’s voices, then a woman’s.
He kept going, because looking back would only slow him down. A second. Half a second. It didn’t matter. Slow was slow, and slow was death.
The floor under him trembled as the creatures landed everywhere. The slapping of flesh against concrete was loud because the gunfire had all but stopped. For a split-second there was no noise at all, until Rachel’s screams filled the room and bounced off the walls, then someone began firing with a semi-automatic handgun—
Will saw Danny in the doorway, holding the door open for him. There were no signs of Tommy. “Come on!” Danny shouted. “Can you run any slower, old man?”
Will put on a burst of speed and lunged through the opening and crashed into a brick wall chest-first on the other side. Behind him came the loud bang! of the door slamming shut and almost instantly the sound and fury of dozens of ghouls crashing into it from the other side.
Thoom thoom thoom!
Ennis’s basement side entrance was one floor below ground, with steps leading up into an alleyway beside the bar. Danny was already halfway up, shouting, “Can’t lock the door on this side! Run run run!”
Will pushed himself off the wall and followed as a gust of wind rushed against him about the same time the door banged open and the sound of hundreds (thousands?) of crashing bare feet flooded his senses.
Tommy was waiting for them in the alley above, absurdly still armed with his sniper rifle, and was pointing it at the mouth of the alley.
“Go go go!” Danny shouted.
Tommy turned and ran toward the back of the alley. Will wanted to shout at him, find out if he knew where he was going, but he didn’t get the chance. Creatures were coming up fast behind him, and he skidded and nearly fell against the dirty floor. He managed to catch himself at the last second, made a quick U-turn, and pursued Danny and Tommy into the darkened alley.
There were no lights, just the weak spill of moonlight from above. Thankfully that was enough to see with, and Will caught sight of Tommy’s lanky form moving with surprising speed. The kid was running so fast, so determined to get to the end, that Will wondered if he even still realized they were behind him.
Danny slowed down in front of him, then spun around like a ballerina doing a pirouette. Will kept going, the loud clattering of Danny’s rifle firing on full-auto behind him even louder in the narrow passageway.
Then he began to slow down, and as soon as Danny fired his last shot, Will stopped, spun, and lifted his rifle.
Danny darted past him a split-second later. “Changing!”
Will opened up on the horde. It was a wall of living darkness, liquid black eyes against the enveloping night. He fired into the center, then swung the rifle left to right, then right to left again. The magazine emptied at an impossible rate, the carbine getting lighter and lighter with every half-second—
“Go go go!” Danny shouted behind him.
Will turned and ran, Danny commencing firing as soon as he was past him.
Up ahead, Tommy was waving them over while holding open a steel door, moonlight glinting off its shiny surface. It was beaten and old, but it was intact, and that was all that mattered.
He ejected the magazine and let it drop to the floor and shoved in a new one while shouting, “Danny! You coming or what?”
Danny was already running back toward him, a big grin on his face. “Aw, I didn’t think you cared!”
“Don’t tell anyone!” Will shouted back, then pulled the trigger again.
Ghouls stumbled and fell, creating a dangerous pile that the others slipped and stumbled against as they tried to get over to get to him. Will was backing up as he fired, watching with morbid fascination as the black-eyed undead things toppled like dominos, bullets piercing non-existent muscle and dropping more of their kind behind them. They were so crammed into the tight confines of the alley and there were so many of them he was pretty sure he was killing a half dozen (more?) with every silver bullet.
He wished he could have said it did any good, but it didn’t. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference at all because for every single ghoul he killed, a dozen were already scrambling over its lifeless carcass and they were constantly moving forward at an obscene rate.
“Move your ass, Kemosabe!” Danny shouted behind him, his voice shockingly close.
Will hadn’t realized he was almost on top of Danny until he spun to his left and saw the open door in front of him. He threw himself inside while Danny unleashed another full magazine into the surging tide of writhing flesh, the harsh sound of bullets snapping and glancing off bones like some kind of strange melody that could only be orchestrated by a mad composer.
Will was turning around when Danny stepped through and Tommy, who had been waiting beside him this entire time, slammed the door shut with all his might. There was the loud (and very satisfying) clack-clack! of a large deadbolt sliding into place. Almost instantly, the door shook as the ghouls flung themselves into it from the other side—
Thoom thoom thoom!
—and Tommy stumbled back, disoriented by the brute force on display.
But the door held. It held.
“Where the hell are we?” Will said as he took in his surroundings.
He couldn’t see anything, but he could hear the sound of his and Danny’s instinctive reloading. Not that he needed light to change magazines. He mastered that little trick years ago and hadn’t looked back since.
Thoom thoom thoom!
Danny was standing next to him, the two of them in competition to see who was breathing harder and faster and more desperately. It was, he thought, a tie. The fact that they were standing in some kind of darkened hallway with no source of light whatsoever did nothing to make him feel any calmer. Danny apparently shared his apprehension.
Thoom thoom thoom!
Click! A beam of light speared a long hallway with white walls, carpeted flooring, and dust flitting wildly in front of them. “Someone’s been shirking their dusting,” Danny said behind the flashlight.
Will grabbed his own flashlight from one of his pouches and flicked it on. “Tommy, where the hell are we?”
Tommy stepped in front of them, still sucking in air. He looked back every time the creatures smashed into the door.
Thoom thoom thoom!
Will and Danny had forgotten about the sound. God help them, but they had become so used to it that it didn’t even faze them now.
Thoom thoom thoom!
“It’s a museum,” Tommy said.
“A museum?” Danny said. “In Dunbar? What’s the museum for? The crawdads of Louisiana?”
“History of the town. Dunbar is, uh, kind of proud of itself.”
“I’m proud of my boxers, too, but you don’t see me starting a museum for them.”
Thoom thoom thoom!
“Are we safe in here?” Will asked.
“I, uh, hope so,” Tommy said, looking back at the door again.
Then—silence.
The pounding had ceased without any warning.
All three of them looked back at the door, Will and Danny running their flashlights over it to make sure it was still closed. It was, and the deadbolt remained firmly in place. The frame looked slightly cracked by the vicious assault, but the door itself was still in one piece.
It was quiet around them. Not just inside, but outside as well. There were no screams, no gunshots, not even the soft but familiar tap-tap of bare feet. It was as if the ghouls had ceased all activity within the city limits.
“What the hell is this?” Danny whispered.
“Hell if I know,” Will whispered back.
It’s the blue-eyed ghouls.
Four of them.
Out there, somewhere.
They know we’re in here.
They have to know.
So what the hell are they up to now?
CHAPTER 20
KEO
DAMN, THAT PLAN went down the crapper fast.
The guy missed with his first two bullets, but all it took was one stray round to turn this into a very bad night. Fortunately for Keo, he had surfaced on the other side of the beach, with a good one hundred meters separating him and the man standing watch on the boat shack. He would have chastised the guy for being a lousy shot, except Keo didn’t think he could have done any better himself.
Looks like we both could use a little more time on the firing range, pal.
He pushed his way into the tree line and kept running. Bullets punched through branches behind and to the left of him as Mister Boat Shack continued to try to take him out. The guy had no chance out in the open when he could see Keo, and he had even less now.
Of course, all it took was one lucky shot…
This wasn’t how he had expected it to go down. Then again, he hadn’t anticipated finding an island lit up like a Christmas tree, with what looked like bright halogen lamps strategically placed from side to side and front to back, either. Towering solar collector trays ringed the place like a shiny necklace, which meant solar power. In a world without electricity, that alone made Song Island worth its weight in gold.
It also went a long way to confirm Allie’s story about a mysterious radio signal she had intercepted months ago that had lured seven of her people here. Those same survivors hadn’t kept in touch, which wasn’t supposed to happen. That was why Zachary and Shorty had come down here with him (well, mostly Zachary), to check up on their missing friends. It was that knowledge of those potentially missing (dead?) people that convinced Keo to take this particular approach.
Carrie hadn’t been enthusiastic about his idea when he told her. “You’re crazy,” she had said. “You’re going to get yourself killed. Why can’t we just go over there and tell them we’re looking for shelter and you’re looking for people who had come here before?”
His natural instinct was to respond with a cavalier, “Because this is the real world, not Fantasyland,” but instead he had said, “Can’t take the chance they turn out to be soldiers. This way, we’ll know who they are before they even see us.”