by Sam Sisavath
“I’ve been telling Willie boy,” Danny said, “that if they like games so much, we should introduce them to Parcheesi or Monopoly. All the fun and none of the fatality. Win-win.”
The other blue-eyed monstrosities in the yard hadn’t moved. The one on the roof of the shack continued to stare in her direction while the other two remained perfectly still, as if waiting for the show to began. There was an effortlessness about the way they just stood that unnerved her, as if they could stay in that pose all night and never have to move for even a second. It was so…unnatural.
“Here we go,” Danny said softly.
The ghoul tugged on the leash, and Harrison stood up obediently. Gaby braced herself for what she thought she knew was coming when the creature beckoned its captive toward it. Long, delicate fingers reached toward Harrison’s throat, and when they pulled away seconds later, the leash was no longer attached. It had freed him.
Why?
When Harrison realized this, he groped at his neck to make sure. He stared at the creature, then around the front yard, before finally up at the second floor. She wondered if he could see her and Danny peeking back at him through the slits. Maybe just her eyes. Was that enough? Did he know she was up here? For some reason, she hoped he didn’t. The prospect of her name being shouted out loud in front of those things made her shiver.
The blue-eyed ghoul opened its mouth and said something to Harrison. Its voice was too low for her to hear from up here.
Its voice.
It’s talking!
“Oh yeah, apparently they can talk, too,” Danny, seeing her reaction, said from across the window.
Harrison was backpedaling in the yard now. First slowly, then quicker, while glancing wildly around him. Then he did what she knew he would do—what she feared he would: He ran toward the farmhouse and straight to the front door. He disappeared under the window and a second later she heard loud banging from below.
Then Harrison’s voice, pained and panicked. “Open the door! Please, open the door! Let me in! You have to let me in!”
The ghoul tossed away the rope and watched Harrison. There was a look on its face, something she had never seen before on the creatures. It looked amused. She turned slightly and saw the same look on the faces of the other three.
They’re enjoying every second of it.
The loud banging continued for a while along with Harrison’s voice. “Please! For God’s sake, open the door! You have to let me in!”
Like hell, Gaby thought, when the banging suddenly stopped.
Harrison reappeared outside her window for a moment before whirling around, expecting an attack at any second. So did she. They were both surprised that none came. Harrison turned and fled up the yard. Then he stopped, seemed to be trying to get his bearings, before taking off again, this time running alongside the house and disappearing.
The creatures hadn’t moved. They simply watched him go. Waiting.
For what?
“There he goes,” Danny said.
“Are they just going to let him go?” Gaby asked.
He shook his head, and in a voice that was odd for Danny, he said solemnly, “No.”
The first ghoul to move was the one perched on the shack. It leaped off the building and darted off in the same direction that Harrison had gone. Then a second one took off, followed quickly by a third, until all four had vanished from the yard.
There was just silence again.
“What are they going to do to him?” she whispered.
Danny shook his head and didn’t answer.
A minute passed, and she was only aware of her shallow breathing.
Five minutes…
She looked across at Danny again, hoping to find some answers from his expression. There weren’t any. He was waiting and listening like her. Maybe he knew something more, but he didn’t say it. She was going to click her PTT and ask Will when a scream pierced the night air.
Harrison.
It was shrill and loud and seemed to go on and on and on.
She had never heard that kind of scream in her life. It wasn’t just that he was in pain. There was mortal terror in every second of it.
And my God, did it seem to keep going, and going…
She had difficulty reconciling that voice with the hardened man who had beaten Peter half to death (or if he hadn’t done it himself, had ordered it), then later tossed Donna out of the car to die on the highway. She wanted not to feel sorry for him, but she did anyway.
Gaby didn’t know how to interpret her feelings. Was it weakness? He was her enemy. She shouldn’t care what was happening to him. Or was it strength? Was courage being able to feel empathy even for your enemy? She didn’t know. She only knew that no one, not even Harrison, deserved what was happening out there at this moment.
No one…
She looked back at the girls huddled in the corner. Annie had placed her hands over Milly’s ears and the girl looked half-asleep in her lap. But it was Claire’s eyes that Gaby saw. The thirteen-year-old’s face was placid, unmoved by Harrison’s cries.
Click. “Gaby,” Will said in her ear. “I need you back at the stairs.”
“On my way,” she said, and walked quickly across the room.
She was glad to leave the window, because the further she moved away from it, the harder it was to hear Harrison’s continued screams. Until finally she was back in the hallway, and she couldn’t hear the dying man anymore.
Lance looked over at her. “They’re doing it again, aren’t they? Like last time. Back at our house. They’re doing it again…”
She didn’t reply. Instead, Gaby sat numbly back down at the head of the stairs, then flicked the fire selector on her M4 from semi-automatic to burst fire. She longed for her own weapon, or at least something with full-auto capability. At least she had silver bullets in her rifle again, so there was that.
“Remember: shoot them in the head,” Will had said.
Right. Shoot them in the head.
Easy enough…
*
THE NEXT TWO hours ticked by in silence, inside and outside the farmhouse. The lack of noise—or any sounds at all—was nerve-wracking.
Blue-eyed ghouls.
She could have lived the rest of her life without seeing them in person.
Not just one, but four.
Four!
She shivered again in the semidarkness and looked quickly to see if Lance had noticed. She shouldn’t have bothered. Lance had dozed off, the AR-15 positioned awkwardly across his lap. She thought about taking the rifle away from him. The last thing she wanted was for him to wake up suddenly and start shooting. And the barrel was pointed right at her, too…
The neon hand of her watch ticked to 10:16 P.M.
Not even close to sunrise. When did the sun come out last time? Around seven?
All we have to do is survive nine more hours.
Oh, that’s it?
The clicking noise in her right ear made her jump slightly. “What’s the word, daddy bird?” Danny said through the comm.
“Jack shit,” Will said.
“How long does it take to eat Harrison? The guy was kind of thick around the ankles. An hour? Two?”
“Oh, nice.”
“What? Too soon?”
“Way too soon.”
“Oh, come on. It wasn’t like we really knew the guy. You know what they say about gingers.”
Tap.
Gaby’s eyes darted up to the ceiling.
Tap tap.
She reached down and squeezed the Push-to-Talk switch connected to her radio. “I hear something.”
“Sorry, kid, I tried to hold it in,” Danny said.
“No, above us.”
“What was it?” Will asked.
“Footsteps. I think.”
She looked across the hallway and saw Danny, still stationed at the window, craning his head upward toward the ceiling.
Tap tap.
“I hear it,” Danny said.
“Ignore it,” Will said. “They’re just probing the roof, looking for a weak spot.”
“What if they find it?” she asked.
“Then we’re shit out of luck with a fist full of ham sandwiches,” Danny said.
Gaby listened intently to the noise above her when it suddenly stopped.
She breathed a little easier.
They’re probing. That’s all. They’re just probing for weaknesses.
“Gaby,” Will said in her ear.
“Yes…”
“Stay where you are. You’re in the perfect spot right now. And wake Lance up.”
She smiled. “How’d you know?”
“He’s not one of us.”
Gaby felt a flush of pride. “One of us.” Her, Danny, and Will. The three of them. In this post-Purge world, it meant the world for him to include her.
She turned to Lance and put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a slight nudge.
He opened his eyes and snapped awake, looking around before locating her through his groggy haze. “What’s happening?”
“You were asleep.”
“Oh.” He rubbed his eyes, then wrapped his hands back around his rifle as if it were his lifeline. The barrel was still pointed at her…
Gaby turned back to the stairs. Or the pitch blackness at the other end. She could really see only the first half dozen or so steps, with the rest hidden in the shadows.
“Heads up,” Danny said in her ear.
“I see it,” Will said.
Gaby glanced to her left, past Lance and into the open bedroom door at Danny. He had taken a step away from the window and had lifted his M4A1 slightly.
“Danny,” Gaby said out loud. “What’s happening?”
“They’re back,” he said through her earbud.
“The blue-eyed ones?”
“Ol’ blue eyes. Maybe they want to serenade us. Sing us to death.” Then he added, his voice rising noticeably, “Shit.”
“What is it?” Will said through the comm.
“I only see two of them.”
“Find the other two—”
Something that sounded like an explosion rang out, drowning out Will’s voice. Gaby moved on instinct, diving further up the hallway, away from the stairs, just as the first pieces of rubble came tumbling down from above her.
The roof. It was caving in on them.
“Lance!” she shouted.
He was struggling to his feet, legs wobbly from sitting too long, and hadn’t straightened all the way up before the roof crashed down on top of him. He let out something that sounded like a scream (A squeal?) before he was pummeled by falling slate tiles. One of them broke over Lance’s head and he stumbled, somehow managing to brace himself against the wall, as more roofing material flooded down on top of him one by one by one.
Then it came down.
It.
One of the creatures. It fell down from the sky like some archangel, minus the wings and halo and good intentions, landing in a crouch next to Lance. It straightened up, its body impossibly long, spindly arms and legs extending in what little light was available in the second-floor hallway.
Glowing blue eyes searched her out, and finding her, zeroed in.
It was gripping something long and shiny in one of its hands. Moonlight glinted off the smooth surface of a sledgehammer.
“Gaby!” Will shouted in her ear.
She was too busy scrambling back up to her feet to respond. She didn’t think and didn’t waste a second. She simply reacted, lifting the M4 and pulling the trigger. The carbine bucked in her hands and the sound of the three-round burst in the close confines of the hallway was like three powerful thunder strikes, one after another.
Her aim was true, and she hit it with all three rounds in the chest.
But it didn’t go down.
It didn’t go down.
Instead, it looked back at her and grinned before tossing the sledgehammer away. Then it took a step forward. Pow! A bullet hit the creature from behind. That same bullet punched through flesh and zipped past her head before disappearing into the wall behind her. Slurping noises as thick, coagulated black blood burst out of the fresh hole in the thing’s neck and splashed with a sickening plop against the floor.
“Gaby, get down!” Danny shouted from the other side of the hallway.
Her mind was reeling, the sight of the creature still standing after she had put three silver bullets into its chest making it hard for her to think straight.
“Remember: shoot them in the head,” Will had said.
Shoot them in the head!
The creature wasn’t looking at her anymore. It was already turning and bounding up the hallway toward Danny, who was firing, having switched to full-auto. Bullets pierced the creature’s body and embedded into walls as Danny tried to track its constantly moving and shifting form. It was dodging his gunfire. How was that even possible? Were they really that fast?
Stupid question, because she could see it with her own eyes.
Danny’s silver rounds that did land were penetrating the creature’s body and continued on, zip-zipping up the narrow space like flies buzzing, slamming into the wall around her. She had to duck to keep from being hit by a stray bullet, and suddenly the prospect of dying by friendly fire was very real.
In a crouch, Gaby lifted her rifle and tried to get a bead on the creature as it fled away from her (“Shoot them in the head!”). Before she could fire, she lost track of it as it disappeared into the room. It was suddenly on the floor and Danny was under it, fighting for his life, and she couldn’t make out where the creature ended and Danny began.
Instead, she reached down and pressed the PTT, and shouted, “They’re inside! Will, they’re inside the house!”
Where the hell was Will? Couldn’t he hear what was happening up here? What was he doing down there? What—
There was a massive BOOM! and the entire house shook from its foundations all the way up to its ceiling, as if a bomb had gone off on the floor under her.
The first floor. Will.
What the hell was happening down there?
She started forward toward the stairs—
—when a second creature fell through the same hole the first one had made with the sledgehammer and landed in an elegant crouch in front of her. It made so little noise, and there was so little effort in its movements, that for a moment the sight of it straightening up, stretching its body like some twisted, deformed ballerina, startled Gaby to the core.
It had its back to her as it rose to its full height—it was at least a foot taller than her, maybe more—and turned around. Gaby became instantly mesmerized by its ethereal blue eyes. Like two impossibly bright orbs washing over the darkened hallway, reaching into her very soul.
It opened its mouth, revealing twisted and cracked brown and yellow teeth stained with oozing black liquid that looked, for some reason, as if they, too, were alive and wiggling.
“Wanna play?” it hissed, eyes glinting with mischief in the moonlight.
CHAPTER 33
WILL
THE DARKNESS DID things to you these days. It lulled you into a strange state of numbness with its overwhelming silence, the unnatural sense of calm that seemed to pervade everything, while at the same time it made you dread all the things out there that you couldn’t see.
Inevitable. Night after night.
Are we just living on borrowed time? Is that all it is?
Tonight. Tomorrow night. The week after. The next month?
How long can we keep the island? How long can we keep fighting them before it becomes too much? Before the costs are too great?
How long…
He had to shake himself to rid his mind of those depressing thoughts. Being downstairs by himself didn’t help. The most he could do to keep busy was move from window to window, checking every corner of the front yard. He couldn’t really see the soldiers on the road from here, but he knew they were still out there, somewhere.<
br />
When they finally came, he was able to concentrate on the matter at hand. His senses were never more razor sharp as they were during the preamble to combat. He felt it now, the hyper awareness of his surroundings. Every sound, every flickering image, and every glowing blue eyes.
As he watched them toying with Harrison, he realized just how different these creatures were. They were the same, but not—an entirely new breed of what he was familiar with. Radically different. More dangerous. This was why they had kept the other ghouls back in Dunbar. Because this was their show. Their sport. Harrison was a warm-up and now they were coming for the main event. He and the others inside the house.
So where were they now? What was taking them so long?
Will glanced back at the staircase behind him. It was too dark to make out much of anything on the first floor even with the slivers of moonlight filtering in through the barricades over the windows, one next to him and the other one on the other side of the door. He could just make out the stair landing—
There was a loud crash from above him, and the entire house shuddered.
He reached for his radio. “Gaby!”
He waited for a response, but there wasn’t any. Instead, he heard the pop-pop-pop of an M4 exploding from the second floor. Three-shot burst. Gaby’s rifle, because Danny still had his M4A1 and he would have either used single shots or gone full-auto.
Will abandoned the window as more gunfire erupted from the top of the stairs. In the packed confines of the house, the sounds were thunderous, but they couldn’t quite drown out the voice. Danny’s, shouting between gunshots. He wasn’t using the radio, either. That was a bad sign.
The first floor. Stay on the first floor! Don’t abandon—
Then Gaby’s voice, blasting through his earbud. “They’re inside! Will, they’re inside the house!”
He was at the stairs, grabbing for the wooden globe on top of the newel, when shadowed movements flickered across the wall in front of him. Figures, moving outside one of the windows, their shapes casting across the room by moonlight.
He spun back around and saw the indistinguishable shapes moving on the other side of the window he had abandoned just seconds ago. As soon as he saw them, the silhouetted forms raced away again.