He sensed the need of approval from him and it was weird. He’d had a lab assistant the year before, whose entry into a pilot program practically hinged on Bryce’s approval, and yet she had been snide and condescending, and in the end, he had been the one fetching coffee. She had been pretty and made it into the program.
“If you need to lie down…”
“What?” Maddy blared from behind them. Bryce jumped feeling sudden incomprehensible guilt. Maddy eyed them both, her lips pursed and her face set like a rock, smiles a great distance off.
“I-I need you to take charge,” Bryce said. This caused Maddy’s brows to come together and her lips to almost disappear. “We need a leader and you seem like a natural.” Using the word natural to describe Maddy or her supposed leadership qualities was like using tin to make a violin. As far as Maddy knew, she had no leadership qualities. People did not like her and rarely listened to her. She would like to think that this was especially true of men, but women found her even more grating.
“Why me? You should do it.” This was purely a defensive remark. Although Bryce was changing and developing qualities that seemed leader-like, he was clearly needed on the wall.
Bryce speared a grey head like it was a rotten cabbage. “Because you are smart and capable,” he said, adroitly leaving off the word “bossy.” He swatted another of the creatures down and watched it tumble away. The surge in front was petering out and now the main part of the horde was swinging around to the west, which was strange for supposedly mindless creatures. “And because someone has to step up and I need it to be you.”
He put a hand on her arm and gently squeezed.
“But I don’t know anything about battles,” she said in answer to the squeeze.
“In this case it’s easy. First off, break up the fight into four sections, north, south, east and west. Each wall will need to be self-sustaining which will mean you’ll have to get a handle on our ammo situation.”
She started to draw back from him as well as the entire idea.
The gentle squeeze grew slightly tighter, holding her in close. “It’s just numbers and no one knows numbers like you. We can’t have a thousand rounds along the south side if there are only two-hundred on the east. Each wall will need to be able to communicate with another, so you’ll need dedicated runners. Also, each wall will need a plan of retreat. We can’t have a mad dash for the doors. In addition to this, I need you to direct the flow of the battle.”
Her eyes started to go wide, which made the silver in them more pronounced. The squeeze again, reassured her. “It’ll be okay. Each wall will need its own mobile reserve force of maybe twenty or thirty people. They’re just in case things start to get a little heated. We’ll also need a reserve at large that you’ll control.”
She began to shake her head. He nodded in response. “Yes. If you use your powers it’ll work, trust me.”
At the word “powers” she drew into herself, suddenly self-conscious. Her powers were great, at the same time they set her apart and made her different from the larger society of survivors. She was tired of being different.
“Can you do this?” Bryce asked.
“Yeah, I guess.” He finally let go of her arm and she rubbed the spot absently as her mind began to spin over the difficulties involved in managing the battle. Without looking back, she turned and began walking away.
Tomika cocked a wary eye at Bryce. “You made her do that. Like you charmed her or something.” Bryce liked the idea of being charming and he gave her a smile. She leaned from it, tilting her head away. “Like some sort of voodoo spell or something.”
That killed the smile. A roar of screams and yells from the west was a good excuse to leave. Hefting his pipe, he said, “There’s no such thing as voodoo.” He loped off toward the sounds of growing panic, just as the rain began to fall, grey and heavy; he was already hungry for another sandwich. “Or soup.” The rain made him pine for hot tomato soup.
He had to shove all that aside as he saw the mayhem at the wall. Maddy had already been pushing people towards this section of the wall and now they were clashing with the people fleeing. Bryce swept through them and saw that the horde had, in their collective wisdom, decided to break through at this spot.
They hadn’t built up a mound of corpses yet, and were doing their best to rip down the cubicle dividers, which weren’t what anyone would call sturdy. As Bryce ran up, one of the walls fell. It’ll be the desks next. And just like that there’d be a hole in the wall.
Without considering the ramifications, Bryce leapt the stacked desks, sliding across the top one, and landing on the cubicle, pinning three of the undead. Too late, his conscious mind cried, What am I doing?
He was fighting.
The hive mind mentality that existed within the horde didn’t extend as far as such things as formations and the zombies were attacking in ragged clumps. Bryce had landed in one of the raggedier clumps, giving him plenty of room to ply the quarterstaff properly. He lashed out with it and the end of the twenty-eight pound iron pipe crashed through the temple of one of the beasts. With a look of startled disappointment, it crumpled in place. Without a second’s hesitation, he swung the other end of the staff and cracked another skull open so that black brains sprayed out. Surrounded, with odds of fifty to one, he attacked, yelling over his shoulder, “Get the wall up!”
With the grey rain as a backdrop, the quarterstaff was a blur, striking with amazing speed and pinpoint precision and down went another one, and another. Bryce hadn’t become a kung-fu master in the last fifteen minutes, it was just that his opponents were little better than slowly shifting punching bags. None threw up a hand or attempted to dodge. Most didn’t even see the pipe at all.
Still, there was no denying his speed and strength; it seemed nothing could withstand him.
He spun, twisted and hacked, dropping zombie after zombie. The dead tried to rush him but he was too fast and darted through openings or made them himself with the pipe. Despite all this, he knew he could not fight the entire zombie horde alone, and nor did he try to. After twenty-seven seconds, he could feel the burn in his arms and lungs, and his speed dropped, though only he noticed.
A cry from behind and he knew the wall was back up. They would need time to brace it up and retie it in place, so he bowled over a half-destroyed creature to his left and crashed through the thickening crowd as clawed hands tore at his clothes. A line of the beasts separated him from safety and for a flash, his confidence wavered. If one caught hold of him…
A barrage of gunfire dropped two of them and the staff caved in the skull of a third giving Bryce enough room to make a leap at the wall. His other rather fantastic leaps had been made from flat ground, while the ground in front of the wall was littered with the dead in ugly little heaps. And some of the dead weren’t even completely dead. He launched himself from the back of one corpse only to have a grey hand shoot up and grab his boot as he flew past.
The beast’s grip was weak and the boot slid from its hand, but not before Bryce’s momentum was partially checked. He hit the top of the seven-foot high wall with his chest and tried to find a grip on the top of the desk abutting it with his free hand. Even without the rain, his hand would’ve slipped.
His fingers squeaked across the desk and in desperation, he let the pipe clank away into the safe zone. A second hand did almost nothing and before he knew it, he was falling back.
Then suddenly gloved hands clamped on his wrists and he found himself looking up into Tomika’s face. Behind her scarf she was straining with all her might. Her efforts weren’t good enough and he continued to slip until others appeared.
He was pulled up just as zombies slammed the wall. The beasts went ignored as a cheer erupted. Bryce thought they were cheering for Tomika and the others who’d saved him, then hands began to clap him on the shoulder. They were cheering him! Tomika had her scarf pulled down and was smiling at him, and another girl was as well. Behind Tomika a man was telling a teenage b
oy, “He just jumped right off the wall!”
Bryce’s cheeks and ears went red as he realized, I’m popular. People like me.
From out of nowhere, Billy was there, holding out the pipe. Bryce took it eagerly and feeling full of himself, tousled the kid’s wet hair. “How about another sandwich?”
“Sure!” The boy took off at a run, eager to be counted as Bryce’s friend.
When Bryce turned, Maddy was at his side. Her smile was tight and he felt a hint of warning, but that made no sense since he was sure she was there to tell him what a good job he had done. Instead, she punched him in the arm, hard. It was like being hit with a hammer and the pain went right to the bone.
“Ouch!” In a flash, he was the old Bryce furiously rubbing his arm and ready to bicker. “What did you do that for?”
“It’s for being an idiot and showing off.” She leaned in close, hissing, “And thanks for giving us all another shot of your whitey-tighties. Maybe if you think you’re some sort of hero, you should wear them on the outside of your pants.”
“What the hell is your problem?” he hissed right back.
She was about to spit out that he had stupidly risked his life for a fleeting moment of vanity, but couldn’t. His eyes were boring into hers, looking deeper. He would see it as the lie it was. The truth was, she had been afraid for him. Afraid that he would be killed and leave her alone. Then she had seen the adoring looks, especially on the faces of the women and her fear for him had turned on a dime, becoming jealousy.
Now her jealousy turned to shame in a blink. Jealousy is for the weak. This was an odd and somewhat random thought for her, but that didn’t make it any less true. “I-I was being stupid,” she told him. “Sorry.”
He looked at her warily, wondering if this was some sort of trap. “Okay. I guess. It just sort of happened.”
“Yeah, I get it. Look, I got to get everything situated, like you said. The ammo and all that.” She turned, her emotions still somewhat jacked-up, but only made it a few steps before a new sensation came over her. A great frightening darkness began to fill her mind. Dread, doom, danger…? It was one of these or maybe all of them together.
Bryce felt it a second later. “You better get moving,” he told her. She ran, fearing her efforts would be too late.
At first nothing seemed amiss. The walls were holding and the dead were less single-minded. Many of them were even milling in confusion.
“Let’s spread out,” Bryce ordered the people around him. He went down the wall directing and encouraging the defenders, not that they needed much encouraging. The pressure on the wall had slacked and they were slowly becoming hesitantly cheerful. Bryce’s anxiety mounted in reverse proportion and when the zombies drew back, first from the north wall, then the east, his heart began to thump heavily.
“Here’s your sandwich,” Billy said, holding a hoagie with two hands. It was spilling meat and the bun would never close. “There’s extra mayo on it.” His smile went from ear to ear and was completely out of place, at least to Bryce.
Although he was suddenly not hungry, Bryce took the sandwich. “Thanks. Now how about some pants?” The boy ran off. Knowing he’d be hungry in ten minutes, Bryce ate the sandwich, though he did so distractedly, watching the zombies mill about. The defenders thought the heavy, cold rain was having an effect, and they made sure to huddle down, many under the desks.
“The hammer’s going to strike soon,” Bryce decided and it did, just as he was wiping the mayo from his hands. It came in the form of silence. The zombies had been moaning and growling, then, like a switch had been thrown, they fell silent until only the rain could be heard. This was so terribly ominous that those cowering from the rain climbed up to see what was happening.
A mist was swelling out beyond the wall. The zombies in front were visible well enough, while those in back took on a ghostly appearance and within these, something large moved. It wasn’t a giant by any means, but was still very tall; seven feet in height, if not more. It was as thin as it was tall, making Bryce think of a bone scarecrow, if there even was such a thing.
“What is that?” Tomika asked.
“It’s a demon,” Bryce whispered, turning cold.
Chapter 12
The silence drew out until one of the creatures erupted in maniacal laughter that rose to a scream.
It sent shivers coursing down Tomika’s back. “There’s no such thing as demons,” she insisted, her voice high and shrill. Above her scarf, her eyes were wide with fear.
Bryce grunted, “Zombies aren’t real either, but here we are.”
“Did he say a demon?” a man asked from a few feet away. At least, Bryce assumed it was a man by the register of his voice. He was of middling height and his form was hidden beneath a coat while most of his face was covered by the upper folds of a turtleneck and a long-sleeve shirt he had tied about his head. When Tomika nodded, he turned to his neighbor and informed him that the thing was a demon and that they were real!
Like an intense, life or death version of the game: Telephone, a frightened whispering ran along the wall and as Bryce followed its progression, he spied Nichola Lines and Victoria Deitch standing near the doors. And there, at a first floor window, safe and dry inside, stood Agent Griffin Meyers, looking as though he were on death’s door—he could feel the demon as well. Next to him, Agent Plinkett, was trying to pull him back.
Movement to his left and there was Maddy heading his way. She was soaked to the bone and her grey sweater clung to her curves. She had lost even more weight and seemed taller. If she dropped a few more pounds and she would be the Hollywood epitome of perfection.
Although she hadn’t yet seen the demon, she could feel it like a black sun emitting rays of hate and just like a sun, she had to squint and turn slightly away when she climbed up on the desks. “It’s different than I expected,” she said. “For one, I thought it would be wearing clothes.” From the sickening vibes coming from it, she had pictured something black as midnight and immense, with horns perhaps. The demon a hundred yards away was pale grey and spindly, its long, long limbs like those of an immense spider.
Bryce was worried about those limbs. In truth, he was worried about everything to do with the demon, but those dreadfully long arms of the demon’s were the icing on the cake. Its reach would be hard to get past. If it were smart, and he was sure it was, it would use those long limbs to keep Bryce at a distance and pepper him with blows. “But if I can get inside his reach, the tables will turn.”
“Inside his reach?” Maddy asked. She planted her balled-up fists on her hips. He had seen this stance too many times to count when they were at Harvard together. It meant that she was utterly immovable in her opinion. “You are not going out there! And why?”
“The…”
“What good would it do?”
“The de…”
“Absolutely not. I forbid it.”
“The dem…”
“You put me in charge, so consider it an order.”
Before he tried to speak again, he launched himself at her and clamped a hand over her lips. “The demon is controlling the horde,” he said, keeping his voice low. “And so far, it’s only been testing us, draining our ammo. When it hits us next time, it won’t hold back, and I don’t think we can win.” He released his hand. “But you tell me. Your sight is better than mine.”
She blinked a few times, clearing the rain, uncertain. She could feel it now. Its control over the dead. She had the sense that it was like a cloud, an angry hard, demanding cloud. The demon was holding the creatures back for the moment. But when it unleashed them… she looked around at the wall and the ragged defenders. The wall was weak and the defenders tired and scared. Still, both had held so far and could hold even longer, but only if the zombies acted like all the other zombies they had come across. If they acted like an army, the wall would fall and fall quickly. Bryce was right, the demon had to be killed.
“But…” But you’ll die, she wanted to say.
The demon’s power could be felt from a hundred yards away. Unlike the black demon Bryce had faced, which had exuded raw power, this one was slick and sly. It was strong, of course but also devious.
But you’ll die. She bit down hard on the thought. Yes, he could die facing it, but it wasn’t set in stone. He should’ve died facing the other demon and yet he had prevailed. There was a chance, a tiny chance he could again and anything she said would undermine him, and she could already feel his fear…his entirely natural fear. It was large inside him and threatened to overcome his determination, and killing the thing would already be—impossible—no, difficult, she told herself.
Despite these thoughts, she slapped a smile on her face. “Okay. You’re right. It has to be done. It has to be killed, but maybe we both go.” He cocked an eyebrow. She glared. “I can fight now. I fought, like a dozen of them just before, AND I killed the she-demon.” It had been deformed and crippled at the time, but it had still been a demon.
The idea of her fighting by his side…it felt like she was throwing him a life preserver and he wanted so much to cling to it. He knew his chances were bleak. “No. It would be wrong.”
“That’s a demon! There’s no wrong way to kill it.”
There was a murmur of agreement from the defenders, all of whom were watching them intently. Bryce leaned in close to her. “That’s not the way and you know it.” He stared hard into her eyes until she dropped hers. She did know it. They were different. No, they were better and they were meant to act better. That forgotten word honor was now something of an imperative.
Maddy looked out through the mist, her sharp eyes picking out the demon standing tall among the horde of zombies. It had its own honor and its own imperatives. The fiend had stopped the battle to offer up a challenge, a fight to the death. It was giving up a great advantage for this. The why of it was elusive and she could only surmise that it really did not care about winning the battle at all.
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