“Yeah, Cal, we figured that out.” Her strained voice cracks in a burst of static. “They’ve got us pinned down against a wall.”
“You’re in good company.” I laugh dryly.
“Damn it,” Ella says. “Don’t get yourself killed, Cal. That goes for Naomi too.”
I repeat Ella’s message to Captain Sing.
“Easier said than done, I think.” Naomi studies each of the approaching zombies. “These monsters are exceptionally hardy. They don’t appear to feel pain, organ damage hardly slows them down, and if you hack off a limb, they’ll kick it aside and keep coming at you all the same. The most effective method I’ve found for killing them so far is decapitation.”
“Fire.” I gesture to my beggar rings. “Your agent, Newman, discovered they burn like kindling. You set them alight, and they’re done for. And they apparently do feel heat, judging by the screams.”
Naomi gives me a sideways glance. “So that’s what all that shrieking was about?”
“Yeah, it was pretty sweet. Desmond and Amy toasted three of them at the same time.”
“Good to know.”
As the zombies draw near, Naomi and I end up back to back, so we can maintain visual on all seven. If we lose track of even one, it could mean the difference between surviving this battle and ending up headless corpses in this graveyard of a convention center. Sure, there are worse places I could die—McKinney’s torture shack, for instance—but since Team Riker is running on the clock to solve the attacker’s riddle and save the city from further destruction, I don’t think tonight is a good time to earn a courageous sacrifice commendation from the commissioner.
“Say,” I mutter over my shoulder, “what happened to all the DSI agents assigned to tonight’s search and rescue shift? You’d think at least a few of them would have heard the com chatter and come running by now. I mean, I know the civilians would have cleared out after the first gunshot, but our guys?”
Naomi sighs. “Did you feel that minor explosion about fifteen minutes ago?”
“The one that rocked the whole center? Yeah. What the heck was that?”
“Me. It was an accident. I sent a zombie flying back into one of the basement pockets, and there must’ve been a gas leak. The zombie hit a wall, there was a spark from its scythe or something, and the whole thing went up in flames.” Her voice wavers in regret. “The backup I’d radioed for, Ramirez and Delarosa, were en route to assist me—until the explosion. A section of the intact east wing, where they were working to free a large number of trapped survivors, suddenly caved in. Several people were buried, with no air. Ramirez and Delarosa and all their people were forced to abandon my team and turn back to rescue the civilians before they suffocated.”
“Jesus,” I whisper. “This whole fucking place is one nightmare after another.”
The zombies, now within striking distance, raise their scythes in perfect unison, their neon eyes staring us down as they prepare to swoop in for the kill.
“So,” I weakly joke, “you take four, I take three? Or the other way around?”
Naomi answers in a dead serious tone, “I’m the more experienced agent, and a captain. It’s my responsibility to take more of the burden, Kinsey. You focus on the three in front of you. I’ll handle the odd man out.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, too soft for her to hear.
And then the zombies are on top of us, and we have no more time to speak.
Chapter Eight
Naomi Sing fights like a goddess, and I fight like a waddling duck.
When the zombies attack, I limbo under one scythe blade, skirt by another so close it tickles my ear, and leap over the last one when it tries to take off my legs. But I lose my footing when I land and stumble backward, and as a result of the flub, my fire attack goes wide, missing the zombie to my right by nearly a foot. I whip up my left hand and try to recover the shot, but now the zombies are onto me, and they take evasive maneuvers. Two of them soar up into the sky, out of range of a continuous fire stream, and the third zigzags toward me, making it difficult to aim.
Damn, and here I was hoping to pull a cool-ass move like Desmond and Amy.
Guess I’ll use the brute force approach.
Or at least pretend to.
I charge at the oncoming zombie, who reacts by dropping the zigzag routine and flying straight at me. Then I extend my hands, like I’m going to blast fire out of both rings at once to enhance the power of my attack. The zombie reacts by flattening itself to the ground and levitating its way up to me with the scythe held out in front of it, forcing me to choose between jumping out of the way or losing both my feet. And if I jump, the other two zombies, now dropping from the sky, will take me out.
Exactly as planned.
I lower one fist at the oncoming zombie and raise the other, and with a mental shout, unleash two different rings at once. A force wave slams the low zombie into the ground, and it breaks through what remains of the convention center flooring, vanishing into the darkness of the hallway beneath. At the same time, fire flares up into the sky, the widest arc I can produce with one ring, and one wraith takes the blast head on, unable to maneuver out of the way in time. It goes up in flames and crashes to the ground like a burning meteorite, its screams permeating the night.
The third zombie glances at its dying comrade—and doesn’t stop its suicide dive.
It has no sense of self-preservation.
Crap.
I try to aim at the zombie and blast it away with the force ring on the same hand I just used for fire, only to find that all the rings on my left hand are cracked. Somehow, I channeled the energy through my beggar rings wrong, again, and rendered them unstable. If I try to use them, and they shatter, I’m—
I dive out of the way of the oncoming zombie, and narrowly avoid losing my head to its scythe. The blade nicks my arm, and though my reinforced DSI coat holds, the glancing blow throws me off, and I end up stumbling…straight into the hole I blasted through the ground.
My chest hits the edge of the hole, and I cling to the ground for dear life, fingers sinking into shallow cracks in broken tile. My legs dangle uselessly in the air beneath me, no traction to be found. If I fall and can’t cushion my landing somehow, I’m going to break my back, or my neck, or my skull. Shit. Shit. Shit. Pull yourself together, Kinsey. You can—
A hand grasps my ankle.
The zombie I shot into the ground.
Fuck.
It yanks my leg, nearly dislocating my hip, and my meager human strength isn’t enough to withstand it. My fingers slip off their poor handholds and rake across the white dust until they reach the edge of the small cavern’s opening. I try to hold on, desperately, but my gloves don’t have enough traction.
I fall into the darkness below.
Something sharp rakes across my neck, barely missing my arteries, and my flailing legs make contact with a solid body—the zombie—as I tumble past it down into the pitch-black hole.
Twenty feet from ceiling to floor.
How long does it take to fall twenty feet?
The math escapes me.
So I wing it.
I twist my body around in the air, stick out both hands, and let loose a diminishing force wave. It hits resistance a half-second later, and, thanks to that old equal and opposite reaction rule, my descent begins to slow. But since I can’t see in the dark, I have no idea when to let off the juice, and as a result—actually, that doesn’t matter.
Because my rings shatter into a hundred pieces.
I fall five feet and smack into the ground face first.
Ow.
Really, really ow.
I roll over onto my side, breathing hard, my now broken mask feeling more claustrophobic than ever. The view through the thick plastic is distorted by a spider web of cracks.
If I hadn’t been wearing the mask, I would have broken my face in a dozen places.
At least the damn things are good for something.
I quickly
check the rest of my body. Nothing’s busted, but I’m going to have some nasty bruises for the next few weeks, and—
Metal glints above me, lit by the light filtering in through the hole in the ceiling, and I roll out of the way like I’m trying to put out a fire, missing the scythe by an inch. It strikes the floor right in front of my eyes, producing a shower of sparks.
I recall what Naomi said about the gas leak from earlier, and my stomach roils.
I’d rather not die in a fiery explosion, thank you.
I push myself to my feet and rip the flashlight from my tool belt, flicking it on and pointing it at the darkness above the scythe still pressed against the floor. It illuminates the zombie, whose grotesque form is even more distorted now. Its skull is partially caved in, leaking a dark, thick fluid that resembles coagulated blood. One of its arms hangs at an impossible angle, the shoulder wrenched so far out of its socket that it almost looks like something tried to rip the limb off from behind.
I did that much damage with my force blast, and the monster is still coming at me.
These creatures truly feel no pain—unless you set them on fire.
I look at my hands, now devoid of beggar rings. Pieces of the rings glitter on the dusty tiles, taunting me. All that extra practice with Desmond, and this is what I get.
The zombie tugs its scythe from the ground and turns toward me.
And I have nothing with which to set it on fire.
Think, Cal. Think.
Naomi’s been chopping their heads off, right? Maybe I can steal its weapon and decapitate it.
I reach down and unclip my holster strap. If I fire enough shots into the creature’s face, I might knock it out of commission long enough to snag the scythe.
The zombie tilts its head down, as if evaluating my gun. Then it flies backward and partially blocks its face with the flat edge of the scythe. It knows what I’m planning.
Okay, I need another idea.
I tug my gun out of the holster and hold it against my thigh. In my other hand, I grip the flashlight tightly, the beam wavering as my hand shakes.
The light passes over the damaged hallway behind the wraith and reflects off a metal beam wedged between two segments of broken wall that is very, very close to slipping out of place and unleashing a cascade of heavy debris.
So my only option is the nuclear option?
Joy.
I refocus the light on the zombie, who hasn’t moved. It’s sizing me up, waiting for me to attack first and fumble again, so it can take advantage of my weak points and cut me down.
It’ll take any opportunity I give it.
Which might work in my favor.
I charge it.
I bring up my gun like I’m going to shoot, and it launches itself toward me, its face securely defended by the scythe. Two rounds fire. Two rounds ping off the blade. Two feet left between us. And the zombie strikes out with its weapon, and I—
—drop like a rock skimmed across a pond, sliding underneath the zombie’s hovering feet.
As soon as I’m clear of it, I roll over, leap up, shove the gun back into my holster and the flashlight back into my belt, dive for the metal support beam, and kick with every ounce of strength I have at the junction between steel and cracking drywall.
The beam springs free like it was pressurized and vaults off down the hall. It careens right toward the zombie, who was in the middle of turning around to attack me again.
Off flies its left arm—and the scythe with it.
And then…
And then, without the beam to keep it stable, the entire section of hallway starts to collapse.
The ground quakes.
The walls close in, crumbling toward me.
The ceiling breaks into a dozen pieces that drop straight down like the sky is falling.
My body moves automatically. I race toward a bent metal door sticking up at an angle, sprint up its length, leap off the top, and just barely, barely, barely grab onto the edge of a ventilation shaft two feet under the opening that leads to the surface.
With a whine of abject terror, the world literally disintegrating beneath me, I grab the rim of the opening and pull myself to safety at the last possible moment. I roll over onto the ledge as a literal ton of debris plummets from one side of the hall and crashes into the other, completely crushing anything between. Including the zombie.
It’s too slow to avoid the onslaught. It vanishes under the landslide of debris, and even over the deafening groan of the collapse, I hear the zombie’s awful shriek of death.
About a minute later, the hall finally stills, nothing but white dust shifting in the air, and small bits of cement and plaster and wood plinking across the top of the rubble pile that has completely filled the hallway cavity. The zombie shrieks no more. Moves no more. Is no more.
I lie on the ledge of the hole, hyperventilating—because holy shit, that was way too close—my eyes lingering on the debris pile as the plume of dust begins to settle.
I nearly have a heart attack when I spot one of the zombie’s legs sticking up out of the rubble. But I realize it’s only a leg. It’s not attached to anything.
Except…
What’s that bit of gold glittering at the rim of its boot?
I squint, trying to get a better look, then remember I have a flashlight. I tug it off my belt with a trembling hand, click it on, and point it at the boot.
Jutting out from the rim of the boot is what looks like a gold fountain pen.
Is that a piece of detritus from the hall, or…?
Naomi said they were looking for something. They were in the basement hallway not lying in wait for an ambush but because they were on a retrieval mission.
Could it be they retrieved their objective?
I shove the flashlight back in its designated spot and sit up, hanging my legs over the edge of the hole. The new debris pile is only a two-foot drop, so I test its stability—firm enough—and step onto it, careful to only put weight on solid objects, in case the thick white dust is hiding a deep groove or straight drop. Slowly, I make my way to the severed leg, watching the rubble for any sign of intentional movement as I go. When I’m close enough, I snatch the gold pen from the top of the boot and stow it away in an interior pocket in my coat.
It might be nothing, but I learned my lesson after grossly mishandling Vanth’s key.
Never assume an object you find at a crime scene is unimportant.
Waiting a few more seconds, to make sure the zombie isn’t getting up for round three, I climb back out of the hole and take a good look at my surroundings.
Two zombies lie headless on the ground, and there’s a lingering cloud of smoky ash I identify as a third—but Naomi and the rest of the hostiles are nowhere to be seen.
The battle must’ve moved when I was underground.
I came here to back up Naomi, and that’s the one thing I failed to do.
Figures.
Ears trained on the vast, hazy surroundings, I listen for any sounds of combat. At first, nothing hits my eardrum. But then, from roughly fifty feet to the south, I catch the faint clang of metal against metal. Like a sword against a scythe.
I turn on my heels and take off.
As the haze clears in front of me, a raging battle comes into focus: Naomi Sing versus half a dozen zombie monsters. Which is more than I left her with a few minutes ago. Which could mean we’re not even close to exhausting their numbers, even after fighting and defeating groups of them multiple times in a row. Which might mean that we’ll all eventually end up dead, because human beings can only fight for so long before they run out of stamina. Sing was already close to exhaustion when I ran into her the first time.
Not that she’s showing any fatigue to her enemies.
While I’m closing in from thirty feet away, I watch a one-woman army kick more ass in sixty seconds than I’ve kicked in my entire life.
Armed with only a sword, a knife, and her beggar rings, Naomi challenges each zombie w
ithout hesitation. One of them dives toward her from the air, and she expertly dodges, then tosses her knife straight through the zombie’s left eye. The zombie doesn’t die, but it does falter out of its attack trajectory, flying straight into another oncoming zombie. They collide, chest on chest, and tumble to the ground.
Naomi doesn’t stop, not even to catch her breath. Her long, dark hair has unraveled from its bun entirely, and it whips around her like a cloak as she pushes up from her knees and charges at three more zombies. The first tries to strike her with its scythe, but it only skims a lock of hair before Naomi’s foot delivers a powerful kick to its gut. The zombie expresses no pain from the attack, but Naomi puts all her weight into the kick, following through so that she’s standing atop the zombie as it loses its levitation and collapses onto its back.
Then the second and third zombies each take a swing at the swordswoman—and she’s ready.
Naomi reels her body around in a wide arc, avoiding one scythe while parrying the other with her sword. The parry knocks the scythe off course, and it slams down like an ax—directly onto the downed zombie’s neck, severing its head. At the same time, Naomi uses the momentum of the parry to change the direction of her own blade, and she decapitates the zombie she dodged a split second ago. Two heads go bouncing across the rubble.
Naomi still doesn’t pause.
Moving smoothly from the decapitation swing into another assault, she spins on her toes, still standing atop the chest of the now dead zombie, and brings her sword up at a sharp angle, aiming for the remaining enemy. The zombie sees this attack coming and yanks its scythe out of the ground to block—only for Naomi to feint.
She takes one hand off the hilt of her sword, allowing the zombie to easily block her blow, and points her freed hand at the zombie’s face. Fire shoots from her fist, a concentrated, white-hot beam, and nails the zombie between its neon green eyes.
The zombie explodes into flames.
Naomi leaps back, away from the fire, and rounds on the other two zombies she knocked down a minute ago, who are untangling themselves to go back on the offensive. Naomi doesn’t give them the chance. She blasts them both with fire, and a second later, there are three infernos screaming into the night, until, one by one, they disintegrate into black dust.
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