The flimsy barrier could not last and nor was it meant to. It had to hold long enough for people to scramble into the stairwells. A few of the younger FBI agents along with Maddy and Bryce stayed to fight the creatures as they scrambled over the mess. The first few were easily cut down, but then the entire mass began to disintegrate under the assault, and once more Bryce was holding the dead back, fighting with everything he had. Sweat burned his eyes and ran down his back, and he began taking ragged breaths between each strike.
Then Maddy tugged his shirt from behind and yelled, “Let’s go!” Other than the agents, who were already sprinting for the closest stairwell door, they were alone with the dead. As Bryce danced out of the reach of one of them, Maddy began running. Bryce could only stagger away and might have been caught from behind if the demon hadn’t thrown aside the last of the barrier and stepped into the high-ceiling lobby.
Bryce lurched to a halt ten feet from the door and turned to face it.
“Y-you c-c-can’t,” Maddy whispered, her voice shaking in fear. She stood in the doorway, ready to haul the door closed.
Of course, Bryce couldn’t. He leaned on the long pipe, trembling, almost unable to stand. His arms were as leaden as the pipe and he couldn’t seem to get enough air. Facing the demon now would be suicide. Still, there was a strange imperative within him. This was his mortal enemy. This was evil personified, and with his powers he might be the only one who could defeat it. If he didn’t step up, countless people could be killed by it.
But he was bone-tired, tired beyond anything he had ever experienced. It was a weak excuse, and his shoulders sagged under the weight of his responsibility.
“Alright, I’m ready,” he said, lifting the pipe and facing the demon.
Chapter 14
Bryce stared down the demon, desperately hoping to get a few seconds to recover. The demon stared back, and Bryce was struck, almost physically by the force of will behind those terrible black eyes.
They held Bryce in place as it came slinking forward, seeming to grow taller with every step. As well, its presence grew in Bryce’s mind, swelling so that independent thought became impossible. He could not even think to move and when the pipe sunk down, held by limp dangling fingers, he didn’t bring it back up into a defensive position—it never occurred to him.
He would still be standing there, slack-jawed when the creature tore his throat out if it wasn’t for Maddy. With the demon practically in reach, she darted forward, grabbed Bryce by the back of his shirt and yanked him back into the stairwell. She left him to fall limply on the cement stairs as she hauled the door back, nearly closing it on the thing’s long, pale fingers.
It pulled them back just before the door crashed closed. There was a pause and then the demon howled in rage and attacked the door, to no avail. This was a federal building and access to its inner workings was not easy to accomplish. Its doors were of thick metal and its locks could hardly be called flimsy.
As the demon uselessly smashed at the door, Maddy turned and glared. “What the hell kind of macho bullshit was that?”
“It was…”
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“No, I…”
“That’s right. Your life is far too valuable to be thrown aside like that.”
He paused, waiting for her to go on. When she didn’t continue, he spoke quickly, “No more than yours. Or anyone else’s.” Although few things were as uncomfortable as the stairs, this did not stop him from falling dead asleep right then. His eyes were open one second and then, with one slow blink, he was gone, just as Maddy began to sound off again concerning the truly unfortunate state in which the American male had been forced into.
Her speech was a lengthy diatribe and it was some time before she noticed he was sound asleep. “Oh,” she muttered. In sleep, much more of the old Bryce shone from within. He appeared boyish and fragile once more. “Well, you can’t sleep here.” She shook his shoulder. “Hey, let’s find you a better place to rest. Come on. Try to stand.”
His blue eyes were dull and unfocused as he got to his feet. They took on a little more life and a little more pain as he eyed the stairs. “Jeeze,” he whispered, then took a step up. That thirty second catnap had been the worst possible thing for him. He had not been fully recovered from his injuries when the battle started, and it now felt as though he had taken ten steps back. Everything hurt and his muscles were constricted and stiff.
“Stop being a baby,” Maddy said, displaying her usual motherly side. “Let me carry the pipe.” He didn’t argue and gratefully let her take it from his cramping hands.
A hundred-year-old man would’ve mounted the first flight of steps quicker and with far less groaning. Upon reaching the second flight, they saw that the stairwell door to the next floor was open and that there were frightened people staring down at them. Consciously, Bryce stood straighter and held in the groans. I’m special, ghosted through his mind and as much as he wanted to spit out the egotistic thought, he didn’t want to look weak.
“Guards need to be posted at each of the stairwell doors,” Maddy said. “And not like this. You have to be where you can see the door.”
Their response: a few murmurs and shrugs. The group parted quickly when they made to go through the doorway—quickly and fearfully. Bryce felt it but gave it little thought; people feared things they could not understand, and he and Maddy had demonstrated they were different.
Maddy, who was tired, but far less so than Bryce, picked up on the truth as soon as they stepped through the door and into an open area. A bank of elevators were just to the side, long, carpeted hallways to the left and right, and a wide space in front leading to the glass doors of some government office.
People were everywhere, sitting in shabby little heaps along the halls and in the office. Each formed a little puddle beneath them. They were shivering and frightened of what was out there…and of what was now inside the building. Maddy caught the whisper, “He’s scratched.”
Bryce was more than scratched. His clothes were in tatters and scabbed-over claw marks covered him, front and back, head to toe. She wanted to reassure them that it was “okay” and that he couldn’t be infected, only she knew there would be no reasoning with people this deep in fear.
“We need to create commands for both sets of stairs,” Bryce muttered, still in leader mode. “And everyone should be consolidated on one floor.”
Maddy shushed him. No one would listen to him now, or her either for that matter. She had been scratched as well, but hadn’t noticed until just then. There were three long gouges on the back of her neck. There was a slight burn to the wounds.
“We’ll talk in a bit. Do you smell that?” She had caught Victoria’s scent, or rather that of her perfume. Few people wore deodorant and no one else had bothered to put on perfume before venturing out into a zombie-filled world. The scent was weak now, barely perceptible. They followed it to a strangely empty office. It was without desks and chairs. In a corner was an untidy pile of phones, papers, family pictures, and monitors.
Near the pile laid Agent Griffin Meyers, shivering and sweating at once. Plinkett hovered over him, while on the other side of the room stood Victoria, Nichola Lines and Tomika. Between them was Billy. He had his heavy chain stretched in a line and next to this was his coat, laid out to dry. By his knee was the bag of sandwich fixings.
Bryce could have kissed him.
“Hey kid,” he said, jerking his chin at the bag. “Just like last time.”
“You guys are scratched,” Tomika said, and the tiny spark of hope she had managed to hold onto dwindled in her eyes. “What are we going to do?”
Silence. Neither Bryce nor Maddy had a clue. They had come south to stop a nuclear attack and maybe they had, though one way or another it was out of their hands now. Escaping from the city sounded good, except where would they escape to? The entire country was dealing with the hordes, or they soon would be.
Bryce eased himself down
with his back to a wall. He had sat on a pen and it was digging into his left butt cheek. With much grunting, he found it and tossed it away. “We’ll figure something out.” The urge to sleep began to come over him and only the sight of Billy pilling meat on a hoagie kept his eyes open.
“I already know what we’re going to do,” Victoria announced, her voice shaking from the cold. “You’re going to find my boy like you promised.”
“Oh, that,” Bryce sighed. “Yeah. I just need a few minutes to rest.” Even with the sandwich being hastily prepared, his lids began to dip. Promises, promises, he thought. There had been another. Though what this promise was escaped him as he drifted into sleep. He didn’t stir when Billy placed the sandwich next to him—though he did smile briefly—and nor did he wake when Maddy pulled him over to lay his head on her lap.
They all watched him for a few minutes, some tiredly and some with shell-shocked eyes. Tomika was one of these. She wanted to close her eyes as well; however, whenever she did, she saw the dead, their long dirty hands reaching for her and their hideous, stinking mouths opening wide.
“What do we do?” she asked again, this time in a whisper. Maddy had closed her eyes as well, and Tomika didn’t want her to hear. “We can’t stay here. Not with them. And there’s probably a bunch of others, too. When they turn, it’s going to be bad.” Her dark eyes lingered on Griff as she said this. She expected the others to at least nod in agreement, but all she got was a grunt from Nichola.
“Don’t act like you’re not scared,” Tomika said. “Because I didn’t see you out there, Miss Bat.”
Nichola was sitting with her knees drawn up with the bat next to her hand. “That’s because I was working with Bryce. He had me keeping the door cleared and if I hadn’t been doin’ it none of you would be alive.” The two glared briefly but neither had the energy to keep it up. “And you don’t have to worry about them, they can’t get the disease. You ever heard of Daniel Magnus?”
“Duh.”
A line formed between Nichola’s brows at the flippant answer. “Well, he did something to them. Some sort of experiment and now they have superpowers, or almost have ‘em.”
“And they’re getting stronger, too,” Victoria added. “You should’ve seen them a few days ago. He was this little weak guy and she was a cow.” She puffed out her cheeks and held her hands out from her sides. “I thought she was going to have a heart attack a few times. She’d get all white and sweaty.” She tried to picture Maddy but instead she saw a small, limp hand covered in dust. Victoria didn’t see zombies when she closed her eyes, she saw that hand, her daughter’s hand.
Tomika stared at the two. Wet and ragged, they didn’t look like much, though she couldn’t picture Maddy as a cow. It had to be an exaggeration. And he might’ve slouched more and maybe he had on an over-sized coat. The immune thing was a different story. No one around her felt the least bit worried that they had been scratched. And Bryce charged into the mob of beasts without giving it a second thought. And they alone went about with their faces uncovered.
“What other powers do they have?” she asked.
“They can see the future,” Victoria said.
Nichola corrected her, “I’d say kind of. They get these feelings. It’s freaky. She’s better than he is with it.”
Tomika didn’t think that was much of a power. But the two were different. Strong and fast. And neither seemed cold at all, while she was shivering. It seemed impossible for them to be asleep just then.
They were indeed fast asleep. Maddy was out and dreaming of a dark restaurant, one of the dingy New York delis. A sandwich piled high with meat and cheese sat on the counter. Her stomach rumbled at the sight. A presence had her turning and there in a low doorway stood Grae-zier. He was so tall she had to crane her neck up to take him all in. His deep brown flesh was smooth, ageless. Down his immensely broad shoulders flowed silken hair of forest green.
He appraised her with gleaming metallic silver eyes. They were so beautiful that she got lost in them and missed half of what he was saying. “…bring a message to the FBI. You are to explain to them that Magnus is their only hope. That he is the only hope that humanity has left.”
“We did that,” she tried to explain; however, she had a dream voice. It was as if she were talking into the vastness of space and her words were lost. She tried waving her arms, but he only looked down at her, a sneer of contempt on his face. People, not even god-like creatures such as Grae-zier, sneered at Maddy Whitmore. “We already told them, jack-ass!” she screamed.
Her outburst left him completely unfazed. His features did not shift an iota from haughty contempt. “They will say a lot of things. Some will be true, some not so true, and some will be lies. That is the way of humans, as you know.”
Maddy’s indignation peaked and her balled fists were planted squarely on her hips. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
For a second, doubt crossed over Grae-zier’s heroic features. “You don’t know?” A grunt and a sad head shake. “I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised given how the twenty-one series is turning out so far.”
She was just drawing in a long breath to really unload on him when the words; “the twenty-one series” struck her. “I am the twenty-one series,” she realized. She looked around the deli and realized this wasn’t an amalgam of delis she’d been in or even a vague, shadowy dream backdrop. This was a memory. What shook her was the fact that it wasn’t hers. There was the hilt of the sword Bryce had been carrying and there were the pieces of it lying around. When she looked up, she saw that the hilt of a great sword rose from above Grae-zier’s cloaked shoulder.
This was Bryce’s memory.
“Or it’s just a dream,” she muttered. Except it didn’t feel like any dream she’d ever had. It was running like a movie. Even then the giant of a man was talking, “…deemed much of the northeast to be lost and will employ a scorched earth policy. You will continue south and you must stop them.”
“This was the warning Bryce got! No wonder it messed him up.” She remembered him coming back into the dark furniture gallery the night before, his face drawn and haggard. Saving a million people had been placed on his shoulders.
“The course they’re on will be what destroys the human race for good,” Grae-zier went on without pause.
“I think you’ve got the wrong guy.” Maddy jumped. The words had come from her mouth! She touched her mouth and chin and felt beard stubble. “I’m a guy. This is insane.” It felt so real that she had the strange urge to feel other parts, too. And she might have if she hadn’t felt a sudden wave of anger coming from Grae-zier.
His metallic silver eyes narrowed. “You are Bryce Carter, Twenty-one Zero One. I don’t have the wrong man.”
“I’m him, I guess,” Maddy felt herself saying. “But, but, but what you’re asking is crazy. The FBI won’t listen to someone like me.”
The scene shimmered suddenly, everything becoming diffuse and the edges of the memory became uncertain. “I’m waking up,” Maddy decided, feeling disappointed. As far as dreams went it had been bizarrely interesting.
“Brrryyyyccce,” a voice called. Maddy spun and where the counter and the sandwich had been there was a dull opal haze. There were many colors within the haze but they were lifeless. This brought to mind the old line concerning perception: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? The haze was the visual counterpoint. If no one was there, light and sound would still reflect, only it would be lifeless, perfunctory.
“Brrryyyyccce.”
The sound reminded her of a telephone ringing. “Who is it?”
The haze began to glow and the color came to life as it should. A second later a tall, elegant woman stepped through. Her hair was midnight black and waved and rippled in an unfelt wind. She was pale white with fine elfin features. Her legs were long and thin, matching her willowy form; she seemed to float rather than walk.
Although the woman’s eyes were close
d, she studied Maddy and the colors just behind her began to dull again and she drifted back as if a vacuum were pulling her. “Bryce Carter?” she asked, unexpected confusion in her voice.
“No. I’m Maddy Whitmore.”
There was a pause before the woman answered simply, “Yes, you are she.”
“Who are you?” Maddy wouldn’t have been surprised if the woman had said she was an angel. She seemed so much greater, so much more beautiful than anyone Maddy had ever met.
“I am Wha-de. Like you, I am one of the chosen. Magnus sent me. Has Bryce fallen?”
“Do you mean died? No.”
The delicate chin danced to the left. “Then you are charged with delivering a message to him.”
Maddy certainly didn’t like the idea of being “charged” to do anything. It was nothing more than a fancy word for ordered. Her frown was the first warning that she was a second from telling Wha-de that Magnus could fuck himself.
She was about to launch into a lesson on manners—a simple please would’ve been enough—when Wha-de said, “They are coming for you.”
Chapter 15
“You must hurry,” Wha-de went on, as Maddy’s mouth fell open. “You must not be caught.” Her light faded with every word and she seemed to diminish, she was being pulled away.
“Wait!” Maddy cried, stretching out a desperate hand. “Who’s coming? Caught doing what?” But the woman was gone and an instant later, Maddy’s eyes cracked open. She was back in the dimly lit office with Bryce asleep, his head on her lap. The dream was right there in the fore of her mind and with it the warning. It was set against a dark background, which she expected to grow darker by the second as the danger approached. It did not. It only mixed with the darkness already inside her. It was the darkness that prophesied her coming death. This had been with her since waking up in the hospital days ago, and she felt she had done a good job ignoring it.
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