by Sam Sisavath
Horrific. It’s horrific!
“There’ll be time for you later,” it whispered, leaning closer still. How much space was left? Not much. Not much at all. “You’re special to him. That means you’re special to me—”
The pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire interrupted the creature’s sentence, and wooden splinters flicked at Ana’s cheeks. She jerked her head to the other side, and out of the corner of her other eye saw the ghoul snap its head back as thick, black liquid oozed from a hole in its cheek that hadn’t been there seconds earlier.
It’d been shot. Someone had shot it. Someone had fired at them, striking the pole she was strapped to, but had also managed to hit the creature!
Don’t shoot! You’re going to hit me, you idiot! she wanted to shout, but at the same time, seeing the monster taking a step back as wetness dripped from its face, Keep shooting! Don’t stop now! Keep shooting, you idiot!
The creature tilted its head slightly, its one eye (A one-eyed, blue-eyed ghoul. Jesus Christ, Wash, it’s real. It’s real!) refocusing on her, the still-raging church fire behind her flickering off its ocean of blue.
Then the monster moved—and vanished.
It was there, one labored heartbeat, and gone before she could even hear the thump of another one.
She tried to find it (Don’t look for it! Are you crazy? Just pretend it’s not there! Just pretend none of this is happening!), but there was no trace of the monster. The only evidence that it’d even been there at all was the continued heat and cold of its presence still clinging to her skin, even underneath her thick clothes. That, and the puddle of black blood on the ground in front of her.
Here it is, Wash. The thing you’ve been searching for. It’s here…and it’s found me.
It’s found you.
“He’s here. He’s close,” the creature had hissed. “Closer than he’s supposed to be. I’ll go see him when I’m done here.”
It knows you’re here, Wash. It knows you’re here!
Run. Run, before it’s too late—
The booming blasts of shotguns from behind her, like cannons firing, startled Ana back to the present. They were slightly muffled, which meant they were coming from inside the buildings. That was a sign the battle was moving indoors. Was that good or bad for her? Was any of this good or bad—
An echoing chomp! behind her, and the pole shook slightly.
It’s back. Jesus, it’s back!
She twisted her head to get a look behind her, ready for the worst, but the farthest she got was Randall, still slack against the rope imprisoning him against his pole—
Chomp! coming from behind her again.
Ana turned her head some more—or tried to—hoping to see what was happening back there.
Chomp!
There, a figure (It’s back! It’s back! And it’s doing something to me that I can’t see!) swinging something in its hands.
Chomp! as the metal ax slammed into the wooden pole—
—and suddenly she was free!
Ana fell forward, caught by surprise, and landed on both knees against the hard ground. Pain, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from staggering right back up to her feet, her mind reeling, shouting, Get up! Get up now!
She spun around as a small, dark shadow rushed toward her. “It’s me!” it said, just before Chris appeared in a stream of moonlight, gripping a small ax in one hand.
“Chris!”
The teen smiled and reached for Ana. “You okay?”
“Chris?” Ana said. It seemed to be the only thing she could make her mouth say. Then, again: “Chris?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Chris said. “We gotta go, okay? We gotta go quick!”
The kid glanced over her shoulder, and for the first time Ana was able to see what was happening back there.
Warped shadows were racing along rooftops and scrambling up the sides of buildings, moving so quickly she could barely follow any one of them. It would have been impossible to see very much if not for the raging fire that was still engulfing the church. It was like a beacon, a siren’s call drawing more and more ghouls out of the shadows. It was also spreading, eating up a couple of nearby structures and going for more.
The staccato flashes of muzzle fire appeared along countless windows, and Ana could make out multiple (Dozens? It has to be dozens.) of unmoving figures on the ground. Dead nightcrawlers. She couldn’t see anything that looked like a human body, but she was too far away (Thank God) from the actual battle to be absolutely sure.
“Ana, Ana,” Chris was saying as she grabbed Ana by the arm. “We have to go. We have to go now!”
Ana turned back to the teenager, standing there with the ax in one hand, her hair plastered to her forehead in a layer of sweat.
“Come on!” Chris said and tugged at her.
“Wait, Randall!” Ana said.
Ana glanced back at Randall. The slayer remained unconscious, his body as unmoving now as all the other times she’d looked. Was he even still alive?
She was reaching for his neck to feel for a pulse when she saw the trail of blood. It was coming out of a hole along the side of his throat. At first, she thought it was a bite mark and imagined a ghoul feasting on Randall while she struggled, unnoticed, nearby. But no, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t teeth marks at all. It was round, and there was just one.
“Is he dead?” Chris asked behind her. “Ana?”
Ana searched for signs that Randall was still breathing, that his wound (Bullet. That’s a bullet hole.) wasn’t fatal. She hoped to find warm breath coming out of his nostrils, but there was none. He had no pulse either, and his chest wasn’t moving. Even his skin felt clammy to the touch, as if he’d been dead for days and not what must have been just a few minutes.
“Ana!” The teenager was tugging at her arm from behind. “Come on! We have to go! We have to go now, while they’re busy with each other!”
She’s right. Chris is right.
Ana turned around and locked on Chris’s eyes. The kid was terrified, and it was all over her face. And yet she’d braved everything to come out here—God knows from where—to rescue Ana. How much courage had that taken?
“Come on!” Chris said, turning and running off.
Ana ran after the kid, even as gunfire, screams, and the crackling of flames filled the night air behind them. But all Ana could concentrate on was what One Eye had said as it towered over her, smiling that gruesome smile.
“He’s here. He’s close,” the creature had hissed. “Closer than he’s supposed to be. I’ll go see him when I’m done here.”
Wash. It was talking about Wash.
It knows you’re here, Wash.
Run! Run away, before it’s too late!
Seventeen
She wasn’t sure how long they ran. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, but her legs were becoming rubbery, so it had to have been longer than that. It didn’t help that the crisp cold air was trying to suffocate her, or that there was simply nothing to look at once they abandoned the unnamed town and the last of the rooftops was absorbed back into the pitch-black night.
She could still locate the town whenever she glanced back, thanks to the fires that had begun to spread to even more buildings. The orange sky above the town grew larger and wider every time she peeked backward to make sure no one (no thing) was chasing them.
For now, it was still just them out here.
Stay that way. Please, dear God, stay that way.
She was running alongside Chris, and had been for some time, until the teenager began to slow down. Ana did too, until they were both walking, before stopping completely. They both took the opportunity to grab their hips and sucked in deep lungfuls of welcoming, cool air.
“Ana, you’re bleeding,” Chris said as she reached over.
“What?”
“You’re bleeding.”
Ana looked down at her forearms, at the scars from the bloodletting. The pain had numbed, allowing her to forget about them even
though there was still blood coming out of the cuts. There was also something else she hadn’t noticed until now: A large splinter sticking out of her left arm, just above the elbow. She remembered a bullet striking the pole she’d been tied to, maybe from the same group of bullets that had struck the blue-eyed ghoul and, possibly, killed Randall.
“Does it hurt?” Chris asked.
Ana shook her head and pulled the splinter out and flicked it away. It didn’t hurt. Or, at least, she didn’t allow it to hurt. After what happened to Randall, and maybe Shelby, too, she didn’t have any right to whine about a little splinter.
“I have something,” Chris said. She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and began ripping it into smaller strips.
“Shelby,” Ana said. “Did you see what happened to Shelby?”
Chris shook her head before tying the strips around Ana’s cuts. It took four—two on each arm.
“What about back there? Just now?” Ana asked. “Did you see Shelby?”
“No,” Chris said. She finished up and handed Ana a couple extra unused strips before wiping the blood on her fingers on her pants legs. “I didn’t see anything. I was just trying to get to you.”
What about the blue-eyed ghoul? Did you see it out there? Ana thought about asking, but Chris hadn’t said anything about it, and she would have if she’d seen it. Ana was sure of it. You didn’t not talk about something like that.
Ana pocketed the cloth Chris had given her. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”
She took the teenager by the hand and they began walking again, putting more distance between them and the town. Ana glanced back one more time, but there was still nothing between them and the wall of flames except black emptiness.
Good. Stay that way. Just stay that way.
“After they attacked the truck, they grabbed me,” Chris was saying.
“Who grabbed you?” Ana asked.
“The ones that attacked us.”
“What happened then?”
“They took me to one of the houses. There were kids there. Some my age, some even younger. And women.”
“Women?”
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“I’m not sure. I think about half a dozen?”
“Did you see how many men there were?”
“Another half dozen? I’m not sure. They came and went. They were getting ready…” She glanced back at the town. “For that.”
“Did they do anything to you?”
“No. They left me with the women and kids. I didn’t even know where you and the others were. Not until they took you into the center of town and tied you and Randall up to those poles.”
Ana looked down at Chris’s hands. She was still gripping the ax in her right, clutching it so tightly the teenager’s knuckles were visibly white.
“How did you escape?” Ana asked.
“After everything happened, after the ghouls attacked, everything went nuts,” Chris said. “I don’t think they expected it to turn out like that.”
“Who? Did you get a name?”
“Just Mitchell. He’s the leader, I think. The one who knocked Randall out.”
Ana remembered an older man attacking Randall, while the younger Ball Cap struck her from behind with the butt of his shotgun.
Gunfire echoed from behind them, and it took a moment for Ana to realize the night air had been free of shooting until now. How long had it been since the last barrage? Five, maybe ten minutes? Whatever was still going on back there, it was definitely slowing down, even if the flames didn’t seem to be any closer to running out of fuel anytime soon.
“What else did you find out?” she asked Chris.
“They planned this,” Chris said. “They used you and Randall to lure the ghouls here so they could kill them. So they could kill it.”
It? Ana thought, but she didn’t ask the question out loud. The answer came a second later, and she shivered slightly.
“I can smell him on you,” it had whispered to her, its voice strangely…elegant? Was that the right word?
She felt another chill run up and down her spine and hoped Chris didn’t notice that one, either.
“But I don’t think they thought there’d be so many,” Chris was saying. “I think that caught them by surprise.”
“Where did they take you?” Ana asked.
“One of the houses in the back. It had a basement.”
“How did you get out of there?”
“It wasn’t easy, and they tried to stop me, but I managed to slip out.”
“Then what happened? Where’d you find the ax?”
“It was in the house I was being kept in,” Chris said. Then, glancing behind her, and in a softer voice, “I hope they got out.”
“Who?”
“The ones in the basement with me. The last time I saw them, they were still hiding down there.”
The teenager went silent for a moment, and the only sounds for the next five or ten seconds were the soft tap-tap-tap of their shoes on the hard Texas ground. The gunfire, again, had ceased momentarily.
“I hope they’re okay,” Chris said, so quietly Ana barely heard her.
Ana looked back at the wall of flames. It was reaching higher into the sky, maybe because it was finding more and more fuel to grow. Soon, there would be nothing left of the place, not even the house where Chris was being kept. Like the church that was used to lure the ghouls in, there would just be ashes in the morning.
“They planned this,” Chris had said. “They used you and Randall to lure the ghouls here so they could kill them. So they could kill it.”
Best-laid schemes, and all that crap, Ana thought.
She wanted to feel sorry for them. For Mitchell and Ball Cap, and whoever that second guard had been, but it was difficult to muster up the sympathy. She had no doubts those men back there would have done the same to Shelby if he hadn’t escaped. A trifecta of cheese.
“Ana,” Chris was saying. Then, when Ana didn’t respond fast enough, “Ana!”
She turned around and saw Chris pointing at a pair of lights. They were growing bigger and brighter, and at the same time, closer.
Headlights. She was staring at a pair of headlights coming right at them.
She grabbed Chris’s arm and shouted, “Run!”
They broke off into a sprint. Ana held onto Chris’s left hand, which allowed the teenager to maintain her grip on the ax in case they needed it with her right.
Oh, who are you kidding? You’re definitely going to need that ax!
They veered right, hoping to get out of the headlights’ path before they could be spotted, but that turned out pointless. The vehicle was also turning, those same pair of headlights pointing in their direction again.
He’s seen us. Shit, he’s seen us!
“Ana!” Chris was shouting.
“Keep running!” she shouted back.
“But Ana!”
“What?”
“Behind us!”
Oh, Jesus Christ, what now? Ana thought as she tossed a quick glance behind her.
Goddammit. When it rains, it pours!
There were two of them, and they were bounding across the flat Texas plain as if they had rubber for legs and springs for hands. The sight of them—low to the ground like black-skinned jackrabbits—made her wonder if this wasn’t all just some twisted nightmare, and maybe she was still tied up in the no-name town, waiting for the end.
Stop daydreaming, and run! Run run run!
She ran, and so did Chris next to her. Even though both of them were exhausted, they didn’t stop. They couldn’t. They couldn’t.
Either the creatures had spotted them, or they’d been lured to their position by the same vehicle that Ana and Chris were trying to dodge now. Not that the how of it mattered, because all Ana could do was run faster and make sure she didn’t lose her grip on Chris’s smallish forearm as she did so.
“Don’t stop!” Ana shouted. “Don’t stop, Chris!”<
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Chris didn’t shout anything back, maybe because she was too busy gasping for breath as Ana picked up her pace. It didn’t take long before Chris started to slow down, and Ana found herself tugging at the teenager’s arm more than usual.
Ana looked over at Chris’s sweat-slicked face. Perspiration whipped off her cheeks and chin and hair despite the chilly environment. Chris was doing the best she could, but she was losing the battle. They’d been running since the town, with only that brief walk-and-talk. Ana was tired, too, but she just couldn’t afford to slow down.
Can’t stop. Can’t let us stop!
She glanced back again.
They were closer, their forms growing in size. She thought she could make out the black of their eyes against all that darkness, but maybe that was mostly her imagination at work. She could, though, start to smell them, and it stood up every hair along her arms.
We’re not going to make it. We’re not fast enough. Either that, or they’re faster.
She looked forward, then around her. There was nothing out here, no place to escape to or buildings to hide inside. They were going to have to run and run and run until morning, because the nightcrawlers wouldn’t get tired. She would. So would Chris. They would run out of steam long before—
“Ana!” Chris shouted, just before she collapsed to the ground.
It was all Ana could do to let go of the teenager’s hand, otherwise she might accidentally pull Chris’s arm out of its socket. She slid to a stop and spun around, the brightening headlights getting even bigger out of the corner of her left eye (It’s still there. Of course it’s still there! When it rains it pours, remember?), while her right fixed on the two black forms racing toward them.
“The ax!” Ana shouted. “Give me the ax!”
Chris held the weapon out to her, the sharp blade gleaming in the moonlight, and Ana thought, Is it silver? Damn, I hope it’s silver!
The sharp edge didn’t have to be all silver, just enough coating the right parts to be effective. She would have asked Chris to be sure if she’d had the time, but she didn’t.
Five seconds.
Two. Just two ghouls. That was the good news.
Four seconds…
She told herself it could have been worse. There could have been three or four or a dozen instead of just the two she could make out with the naked eye. Take one out first, then handle the second. Yeah. That’s all.