by Sam Sisavath
“You don’t understand,” she said, looking back at him. “I don’t want to change anybody’s mind. The people at the camps. In the towns. They’ve decided, and I’m fine with that. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to improve their lot anyway.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to be against the people in the towns to keep fighting the ghouls, Will. From what I’ve seen, you have no interest in harming those people. Am I right?”
“Of course not. Why would I want to hurt them?”
“Exactly. It’s just you versus the ghouls and the people in hazmat suits. What you call collaborators. And you’re only violent with them because you have no choice. Is that also right?”
He nodded. “I don’t want to hurt anyone unless I have to. I’ve seen the blood farms, the before-picture of when people like you were in those induced comas. I know what you’ve been through, doc, and maybe I wouldn’t have agreed to the deal myself, but I can understand why you and the others did.”
“So there’s no conflict,” she said, nodding. He wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him or herself. “We fight the creatures, but not the people.”
“That sounds like a solid plan,” he said, and closed his eyes.
“Are you okay?” Zoe asked.
“I think I’m bleeding again. Can you do something about that?”
He heard her moving around. “Shit, Will, I was going to wait until you’re stronger to suture your wound, but I might have to do it sooner. Can you—”
“Do it,” he said.
“It’s going to hurt.”
“Just do it,” he grunted.
His last thoughts were of Gaby, and he wondered what she was doing back at the island right this moment. Probably walking on the beach with Nate. Or Benny. He wished her luck in choosing. God knew they all had to grab happiness wherever they could these days.
At least one of us made it back to the island…
CHAPTER 31
GABY
Gaby opened her eyes to silence and darkness. She climbed off the couch, her sudden movements waking Nate in the process. He had been asleep next to her, dozing from the medication, and she was surprised he was even alert enough to feel her moving.
“What’s going on?” he said, his voice groggy.
“I think I heard something,” she whispered back.
His voiced dropped to match hers. “What?”
“I don’t know. Stay here.”
She groped around in the darkness for her pack, unzipped it, and pulled out a glow stick. She pocketed it and grabbed the AR-15 leaning against the wall nearby and moved across the room toward the door. Her ears were up, listening to every sound, every heartbeat, every labored breath between her and Nate.
She crouched in front of the door, reached up, and twisted the deadbolt. With one hand, she slowly pulled open the door a fraction—just enough to see out—while making as little noise as possible. The night was so quiet that any little sound might as well be an announcement that they were inside the pawnshop.
“What do you see?” Nate whispered behind her.
She wasn’t sure what she saw, so she said nothing. The inside of the pawnshop was still wet, puddles of water pooling over the tiled floor, most of it concentrated near the front where Nate had broken the glass and bent the bars back to access the building.
It was pitch black outside, and the damn moon had chosen this night to go into hiding; she couldn’t make out anything, not even the parking lot beyond. She could just barely discern the counter in front and to her left, and the shelves to her right.
Other than that, it was like staring into the abyss.
Nate crouched next to her, his breath warm against the back of her neck. Thank God he was quiet. Benny would have been lumbering around like a giant in the dark.
“What do you see?” he whispered again.
“Nothing,” she whispered back.
He stared for a moment, then shook his head. “I can’t see anything. Less than anything.”
“Yeah…”
“I—” He stopped in mid-sentence.
“What is it?” she whispered.
He pointed toward the windows and slightly to the left.
Her heart skipped at the sight of a ghoul moving quietly from left to right, sliding across the front of the pawnshop with that unnatural, almost ballet-like grace they had about them. There was only one and it was small, its appearance more fragile than she was used to seeing. It peered inside the pawnshop, searching with beady eyes, upturned nostrils sniffing the air.
Can it smell us?
Gaby tightened her grip around the cold brass of the doorknob, preparing herself mentally to slam the door shut at a moment’s notice. Not yet, though, not yet. It hadn’t seen them, and moving too quickly now would be giving away their position.
We should have looked for a basement. Stupid. So stupid.
She watched the small, malformed ghoul moving across the front glass wall of the pawnshop. It was looking at something else now, something outside the store.
Keep going. Just keep going, you little shit.
Then it stopped at the broken section of the window.
No…
It lowered itself to the ground, toward the opening.
No!
“It’s going to come through,” Nate whispered.
She heard the sound of Nate sliding the Beretta out of his waistband.
“Nate,” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Take my Glock and the two spare magazines on my right hip.”
“Why?”
“They have silver ammo.”
“Right, silver bullets.”
He put his Beretta away and drew her Glock from its holster, then opened one of her pouches and pulled out the two spare magazines.
“Is this all we have?” he asked.
“More magazines in my pack, but they’re loaded with regular ammo.”
She remained still, watching through the small opening as the ghoul slowly slid under the window.
Dammit.
The good news was, there was still just the one. She could deal with that. Too bad she had never gotten around to arming herself with a silver knife, the way Will carried that cross-knife of his everywhere. She was going to have to make a lot of noise just to kill this one ghoul, which would risk bringing more—
She hadn’t even finished the thought when two—no, four—ten more ghouls had appeared out of the darkness and were swarming toward the pawnshop from the other side of the window.
Oh, God.
Then ten became twenty, and suddenly there were too many to count. She didn’t know where they had come from—nowhere and everywhere. Like moths to the flame, squirming, pushing, and fighting to enter the pawnshop at the same time. So many that they began clogging up the entrance like hundreds of black worms wriggling in the ground, their individual silhouettes impossible to make out against the blackness. She got queasy as glass shards sticking along the broken windows sliced into their flesh, drawing thick clumps of blood that dripped, dissolving in the puddle on the floor.
And still they pushed, wordlessly, soundlessly, anxiously—desperately—to get inside.
The first creature she saw—the painfully small one—was the first to make it through, pushed on ahead by the amorphous blob behind it. It slid against a puddle, almost out of control, but quickly gathered its wits about it and looked across the darken room and hissed at her.
As the ghoul rose to its feet, Gaby pushed the door open wider and shot the creature in the chest.
Even before the creature fell, two—three—five—were already leaping over its collapsing form and bounding across the room, moving with such incredible speed that Gaby found herself staring, fascinated and awed by their ferocity.
“Gaby!” Nate shouted behind her.
Gaby stood up, switched the AR-15 to full-auto and squeezed the trigger.
Bullets speared flesh and
chipped bone and kept going, the creatures’ soft, non-existent muscle doing nothing to stop the velocity of the silver rounds. The windows spiderwebbed, the pak-pak-pak sound of impact like the raindrops from earlier. What sounded like a bullet ricocheted off one of the metal bars and pierced a ghoul, even as more of them fell and flopped to the floor as if they were slipping and sliding.
For a brief instant, she almost wanted to laugh at the comical sight.
She dropped seven of them in the first burst, but they hadn’t all crumpled to the floor yet before another wave began squeezing their way through, cutting and slashing and eviscerating themselves against the broken glass.
“Gaby!” Nate shouted again. “Close the door!”
Gaby couldn’t really hear him, because she was too busy emptying the rest of the magazine into the jagged hole where the wet floor met the opening, where the ghouls were fighting—each other and the shards of glass—to get through. The sound of silver slapping into flesh, continuing, hitting more flesh, deflecting off bone, and digging into the parking lot beyond was like a melody—a death song filling the quiet, silent night.
It was almost beautiful.
Then the window disappeared, and there was just a wall of moving prune flesh—gaunt, bony faces and dark, unforgiving black eyes looking back at her.
“Nate!” she shouted. “The desk!”
Gaby stepped backward and slammed the door shut. She twisted the deadbolt into place, ejected the spent magazine and ran over to her pack, pulling out a fresh one and shoving it back into the rifle.
One down. One to go.
She pulled out the glow stick and cracked it, then tossed it on the floor in the middle of the room. The office lit up, just as the sound of falling glass rattled from the other side of the door, and she knew they were breaking through, no longer willing to wait in line. She could already hear the cacophony of bare feet slapping against tiled floor, splashing water that had settled across the store.
Gaby slung her rifle and reached for the other side of the desk. Nate, on his own, had managed to push the big, heavy oak furniture a good five feet. Gaby grabbed the other end and, grunting with the effort, lifted it up. Nate did the same on his end, using both hands, though his right was doing most of the lifting. She didn’t want to imagine the kind of pain he was feeling at the moment. She couldn’t afford to care. Not now, not with the creatures bearing down on them.
They moved to the door one desperate inch at a time, the desk between them. She could feel sweat pouring down her temple, cheeks, and dripping off her chin. Nate’s face was a twisted mask of pain, and he grunted with every successful inch.
They were almost at the door when the first ghoul smashed into it on the other side. The entire frame trembled under the impact.
She moved faster, and Nate, sensing her urgency, fought to keep up.
“How we doing this?” he grunted.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
“Angle it, on its side, tabletop against the door!” she shouted back.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
The attack on the door had increased in intensity and speed with every passing second. The doorknob quivered and the wood quaked and the frame splintered with each impact.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
At last they were at the door, and Gaby dropped her end and rushed over to Nate’s side. They exchanged a brief nod, and with a heavy, simultaneous painful grunt, upended the desk until the bulky object was standing on its side.
“Push!” Gaby shouted, and put her shoulder against the underside of the desk as Nate did the same next to her.
She didn’t stop pushing until the desk’s tabletop slid perfectly flat against the door. It almost instantly trembled as soon as the two pieces of wood touched.
Thoom-thoom-thoom! Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Gaby backpedaled, taking each step, each breath, almost in tune with the relentless, unceasing pounding. Nate mirrored her actions, though she barely noticed him until his labored, ragged breathing seeped into her flaring senses.
“Do you think it’ll hold?” Nate asked between gasps.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
“No,” she said quickly.
“Damn.” He pulled out the Glock from his waistband, his right pocket bulging with the two spare magazines. The Beretta was stuffed behind his back. “How did they know we were in here?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“We should have gone looking for a basement.”
“Yeah.”
A loud crash rang out, and she knew the door had just come free from its frame on the other side of the desk. Splinters flickered into the room, along with torn fragments of the wall that shot at her like projectiles. She twisted her body instinctively and swatted the air, batting away a few loosened chunks.
“We’re fucked,” Nate said.
“Not yet.” She glanced behind her at the back door.
Nate followed her gaze. “Isn’t it more dangerous out there?”
“There are two dumpsters in the back…”
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
“So we’re going dumpster diving after this?” He grinned, his face comical in the green fluorescent glow. “Awesome. Although, I always pictured my first date with you being a little cleaner.”
“This isn’t the time—”
Another massive Thoom! and the desk slid back a few inches, squealing loudly as its edges dug into the tiles. Peeking out above the shorter desk, she could see the top portion of the door, opening slightly, though how the door managed to stay on its hinges was baffling since there didn’t seem to be much of a frame left.
They took another involuntary step back, then another one. She lifted her rifle, and Nate raised the Glock.
The first creature poked its head out of the right side of the desk, trying to squeeze its way through. Its slim, emaciated body moved like a skeleton draped with black flesh instead of something that was actually alive.
She shot it in the head and the creature flopped to the floor.
Nate stared at the dead (again) creature, almost as if he couldn’t believe it. “Silver bullets. Holy shit.”
“Aim for the biggest part of their body,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where you hit it, as long as you hit it with silver.”
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Two more creatures emerged out of the left side of the door. Gaby shot the one that was almost through, while Nate put the other one out of its misery. The creatures’ bodies smacked against the floor, where they lay still—before they were jerked unceremoniously back through the door to make room for the next wave.
Another loud crash, and the desk moved backward another two inches.
Gaby slung her rifle and rushed forward, throwing her shoulder into the desk. Then Nate was there doing the same thing and they moved the desk an inch at a time back against the door.
A ghoul struggled to squeeze through the slight opening next to her, so close Gaby could smell the rancid odor seeping from its pores. She shot the creature’s arm at point-blank range, rendering flesh and snapping bone as if it were powder. The arm flew off at the elbow joint and streaked across the room.
The relentless hammering continued on the other side of the door, over and over again, pounding into every inch, top to bottom, side to side, an endless sea of blows, never ending, never pausing for even a second to let her breathe.
Thoom-thoom-thoom! Thoom-thoom-thoom!
THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!
“Push!” she grunted.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Nate grunted back.
Nate gave her a look, his face almost ethereal in the green fluorescent of the glow stick. And he did push, legs struggling desperately under him, sheets of sweat breaking out across his face. She prayed to God his stitches didn’t snap free at that very moment.
They managed to push the desk another inch back against the door, when a loud, massive hit shook both of them to their core. She didn’t know they were
even capable of that kind of power, and her mind was still reeling, trying to justify it, even as she and Nate both took a stunned step back.
By the time they gathered themselves and threw their bodies back against the desk one more time, the door had reopened another two inches and one of the ghouls had managed to squeeze through the small sliver.
It leaped inside, moving so fast she only saw a blur before she heard the click-clacking of bones against the tiled floor. Its skin, stretched tight over deformed bones, made for an odd, grayish tint that looked as if it were moving slower than it really was. But her eyes were lying to her because she knew it was fast, darting from the door to the side wall.
Gaby stepped away from the door, tracking the creature with her rifle. It raced to the back of the room, toward the couch, and bounded over it. It ran with purpose, moving around the back instead of attacking head-on, each second bringing it closer to her.
“Dead, not stupid,” Will always said.
She fired—and missed!
The damn thing was actually zig-zagging across the room in order to make her aim more difficult.
So she feigned a shot, made as if to shoot by jerking the gun toward it—and got it to zig instead of zag (“Don’t shoot at where the target is, shoot at where it’s going,” was a mantra Danny had drilled into her head). She squeezed off a second shot and clipped it in the neck. Just barely. It was enough, and the ghoul stumbled and went down as if it had run into a wall.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!
Gaby spun around just as the desk and door and chunks of the wall exploded behind her. She felt rather than saw Nate stumbling back, disoriented, trying to shake off the blow, then losing his balance and crashing to the floor with a loud expelling of breath and pain.
The desk had collapsed to the floor, returning to the position originally intended for it—on its legs. The door, or what was left of it, hung from a single hinge, the frame forced free from the wall, leaving behind little more than a jagged rectangle.
She looked past all of that at the nebulous blackness moving and shifting and surging through the opening. She didn’t even have time to count how many were in the pawnshop beyond the door, or how many were clamoring over the backs of the ones in front of them, trying to be the first into the room, the first to take what they wanted from her, from Nate.