by Sam Sisavath
For every one that staggered to the floor and didn’t move again, two more—five more—took its place.
There were too many. There were simply too many.
And they kept coming.
And coming…
“Gaby!” Nate shouted behind her. (When had he gotten behind her?)
Gaby heard his voice only because she had stopped firing; the magazine was empty. She backed up, hitting the release switch to pull out and slam in her final magazine before looking back.
Nate was at the door, one hand on the deadbolt, the other on the lever. She could see blood soaking through the fabric of his shirt over his left shoulder, the red color spreading along his left arm. He looked deathly ill, but was somehow still standing.
“We have to go!” he shouted.
She nodded, turning around just as two ghouls came within inches of scratching her face. She didn’t have time to aim and fired from the hip instinctively, slicing them in a short burst. They fell, the bullets that killed them continuing on, knocking three more ghouls off the desk seconds after they had scrambled on top of it.
Clumps of flesh, smelling like garbage and decaying meat, along with viscous liquids made of things she’d rather not think about, splattered her shirt and neck and cheeks, and she could have sworn some got in her hair, too.
“Do it!” she shouted. “Do it now!”
She kept backing up, firing into the thick, shapeless mass of quivering flesh flooding through the door over and around the fallen desk. It didn’t matter where she fired. One section of the room was the same as the other. It looked as if the bullets were punching into an ocean. An endless sea, as deep as the universe, moving forward to take her into its final embrace.
She felt the large gush of cool wind behind her, and knew Nate had thrown open the back door. She waited to hear his voice, calling to her to come already, that there wasn’t any time left to make their escape.
The dumpsters. If they could get to the dumpsters…
But there were no sounds from behind her, no Nate screaming, urging her backward. She wondered if he was dead, if opening the back door had only allowed more creatures waiting outside to come in.
She had to turn, had to look back, but she couldn’t. There were too many in front of her, that if she took her eyes off them for even a second, it would all be over. They would make up the distance and that would be it. That would be the end.
“Nate!” she shouted.
There was no response.
She kept firing, counting the number of bullets. Too many, too fast, too—
Empty.
She looked over her shoulder—
Nate was on the floor, his body in a heap.
And something else—a second figure—was rushing toward her. Dark, tall, and wearing a white hazmat suit.
As her mind tried to process what she was seeing, the stock of a rifle smashed into the side of her neck. Gaby gagged, more from the shock than pain, and dropped her rifle, falling to her knees. Groping at her neck, she struggled to breathe.
She looked toward Nate, at the open back door, as a second hazmat-suited figure darted inside, leaping over Nate’s prone body. The man’s gas mask made for a fiendish sight in the green of the glow stick, as if he were an alien invader coming to take her. It moved toward her with surprising speed, and before she could stand up and fight, it grabbed her and held (embraced?) her.
Then darkness, as the world was swallowed by black-skinned creatures blotting out everything around her. Glimpses of blurring flesh and bottomless pits moved toward her, then past her.
The arm around her was so tight it threatened to choke the life out of her. She wanted to fight, but barely had any strength to keep her eyes open. And the pain from her neck was impossible to ignore. She gagged, trying to remember how to breathe again. But it was difficult. It was so difficult…
Her vision started to fail her and everything became heavy. Slowly, slowly, she realized trying to breathe was too challenging, and the last thing she remembered was the sound of screaming…and she knew it wasn’t coming from her.
CHAPTER 32
WILL
HE DREAMT OF Lara. Of white sandy beaches. A perfect breeze and the soft glow of blonde hair in the sun. Soft skin under his fingers, and kissable lips.
Lara…
“You know how to make a girl jealous,” a voice said.
He opened his eyes slowly, painfully. The spiderwebbed front windshield of the Ford F-150 was the first thing that came into view. Behind that, sunlight filtered in through holes along the steel garage door and from crevices around it.
“What time is it?” His voice sounded more like a guttural groan. How long had he been asleep?
“Morning,” Zoe said.
“What time?”
“You have a watch. Look at it.”
“I can’t feel my arms.”
Zoe leaned over, lifted his right hand, and showed him the face of his watch: 9:15 A.M.
“There,” she said. “Happy?”
“I slept through the night?”
She smiled down at him. “Yes and no.”
A bottle of water magically appeared in her hand. She tipped the opening against his lips and he opened his mouth and drank. Rain water. It still tasted better than no water, and his throat was parched.
“You slept through the last two nights,” she said.
“Two nights?”
“You almost died, Will. Again.” She frowned at him. “Honestly, I don’t know how you’re still alive right now. You’re basically seventy percent flesh and blood and thirty percent sutures. You almost bled out the last time you were conscious.”
“Good thing I’m stubborn.”
“No kidding.”
He struggled to sit up. She put her hand on his chest and pushed him back down. She must have been stronger than she looked, because he couldn’t move at all against her palm. That, or he was half dead and had little strength to resist.
“Slowly,” Zoe said. “Okay? Slowly.”
He laid back down and calmed his breathing. Better.
“The good news is, your sutures are holding and you’re not bleeding anymore,” she said.
“The bad news?”
“I tried washing your shirt in the rain, but I’m not very good at laundry.”
She held up his shirt. There were still blood stains on it, and it smelled like rain. He smiled and took it, put it on the dashboard for later. She offered him the bottle again, and he drank some more.
“Lara,” she said.
“What about her?”
“You kept saying her name in your sleep.”
“I guess I was dreaming about her.”
“I figured,” she smiled. “Hungry? I’ve been filling you up with nothing but water for the last two and a half days.”
“There’s food in my pack…”
“There was food in your pack. I ate it.” She picked up a plastic Phillips 66 bag from her floor. “But the gas station next door had some food on the shelves. Lots of stale chips, Pringles, and plenty of beef jerky and other nonperishables.”
She took out a can of Dole fruit and pulled the tab free. He smelled syrup-drenched artificial flavoring and immediately thought of Gaby.
At least one of us made it back home…
“You need to be careful about going outside the garage by yourself,” he said.
She gave him a wry look. “Give me a break. I’ve been doing it for the last two days while you were sleeping on your ass in here. I know you’re the big bad Army Ranger, but I do have some survival instincts of my own, you know. Besides—” she picked up something from the dashboard—his cross-knife “—I had this. You religious or something?”
“No.”
“So what’s with the cross?”
“You see a cross, I see a knife.”
“So, cross-knife?”
“Something like that.”
She handed it back to him, and Will slipped it into its sheath along his left hi
p.
“Did you have to use it?” he asked.
“No.”
“Anyone looking for us while I was out?”
“I don’t know if they were looking for us specifically, but while I was outside I saw a lot of movement along the highway the last few days. And a couple of vehicles came close enough a couple of times that I could hear them from inside the garage.” She pulled open a stick of Jack Link’s beef jerky and took a bite. Teriyaki-flavored beef drifted from her seat to his. “This thing isn’t half bad. I can see why you like it.”
He sporked a chunk of pineapple into his mouth, tried to chew it a little bit before swallowing.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said after a while.
“I’m not sure I could stop you if I wanted to, so go ahead.”
“Would you have really shot me back there at the camp, if the others had opened fire on us?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Because if they opened fire, chances are one of them would have shot you by accident first.”
She glared at him. “God, you’re such a dick.”
He wanted to laugh, but the most he could manage was a soft chuckle.
She went back to eating the jerky while he fished out the final piece of pineapple, then tilted the can over his lips and drank down the sugary liquid.
When Will lowered the can, he saw that the garage had gotten noticeably darker. He checked his watch just to make sure his internal clock wasn’t out of whack. No, it was still just 12:11 P.M.
“It’s getting darker,” he said. He glanced up at the roof. “Rain.”
The first drop hit Fredo’s rooftop on cue, quickly followed by sheets of rain pouring down across the holes and crevices along the closed garage doors.
“Good thing I went shopping earlier today,” Zoe said.
*
THE RAIN MADE him feel better, and allowed him to relax and concentrate on not dying. The daylight kept the ghouls away, and rain kept the collaborators hunkered down. He wasn’t sure if they still had pursuers, but he always liked to keep his options open.
He got some of his strength back, enough that he could climb out of the truck on his own and walk around in the tight confines of the garage while barefoot. (He didn’t recall when Zoe had taken off his boots.) Every muscle ached and joints popped with every move, but he kept shuffling anyway until he got the hang of it again.
Zoe watched him carefully, and he wasn’t entirely sure if it was admiration he saw in her eyes or pity. Probably a combination of both. Eventually, he got enough strength back to pull his shirt on.
By three in the afternoon, the rain was still pounding on Fredo’s, and water had seeped into the garage under the closed doors. He slipped his socks and boots back on and continued his movements. He felt better with every step, every hour on his feet. His strength wasn’t there yet, and it would be a while before he was his old self. The good news was that he barely felt the sutured wound along his thigh, and the one in his side was manageable as long as he didn’t think about it too much.
He ate his share of the beef jerky and canned food Zoe had scavenged from the Phillips 66 next door. Whenever they ran out of water—which was often—they refilled it outside in the rain, taking turns. Zoe regulated his medication, not that there was enough variety to choose from. The pain was unavoidable, but he soldiered through it and thought of something else.
The island. Lara. Danny’s bad jokes. Sarah’s cooking.
He was at least heartened that Gaby and Nate had probably made it back to the island by now. He had no way of knowing for sure, but Gaby was resourceful, and even injured, Nate had proven himself to be a good companion for her.
Teenage love in the apocalypse lives after all.
*
WHEN HE OPENED his eyes again later that night, it was pitch dark inside the truck, and he couldn’t hear the sound of rain anymore, only the soft and steady drip-drip-drip of leftover water falling off the sides of the building.
Nightfall.
He could see the whites of Zoe’s eyes. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, hands over her legs. She was staring at him as he stirred awake.
“They’re outside,” she whispered. Her lips trembled, making it sound as if she were stuttering.
He looked down at his watch, the hands glowing bright green in the darkness: 10:39 P.M.
Will twisted slightly in his seat, grimacing with the pain (Ignore it), and reached into the back for his M4A1 rifle. There, the cold but comfortable feel of well-worn metal. He pulled it forward by the barrel and into his lap. He ran his hands over the carbine, checking to make sure everything was where it should be.
Zoe was looking at the closed garage door in front of them now. Moonlight filtered in through the tiny crevices at the bottom and along the sides, as if the door were glowing in the dark. Figures—thin, gaunt shapes—darted across the other side, never staying at one spot for very long, and the sound of splashing puddles that had accumulated in the parking lot after the day’s rain.
How many? More than two. Possibly five. Likely more than that.
His gun belt was on the floor. He reached down and tugged the Glock gently out of its holster and checked to make sure he had a full magazine inside. He slipped it back into the holster, the slide of the Glock’s plastic polymer against leather like fingernails on a chalkboard. He carefully wrapped the gun belt around his waist and pulled it tight, ignoring the brief flash of pain. He was glad he had swallowed extra painkillers when Zoe wasn’t looking.
His pack rested between the two front seats; he picked it up and calmly, silently searched for the spare magazines inside. He had two spares for the M4A1 and two for the Glocks. All silver ammo. He had given the rest to Gaby.
“What are we going to do?” Zoe whispered, her voice impossibly strained.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
Her eyes trembled and widened, over and over again.
“We’ll be fine,” he whispered.
There was a loud bang! as one of the ghouls crashed into the steel garage door. The whole building seemed to shake for an instant, before another one of the creatures smashed into the same door just as it was settling.
Zoe almost screamed, but somehow managed to stop herself in time.
“Did you latch the garage doors?” he asked.
Will had dispensed with the whispering now. The ghouls clearly knew they were inside, and he could see the number of figures increasing through the slits. There were so many that they completely overwhelmed the slivers of moonlight that were once visible.
Twenty. Maybe thirty…
Zoe managed to nod back at him, her voice trembling when she answered. “I couldn’t find the keys to lock them in place.”
“It’s okay, neither could I.”
He had looked everywhere the first time they had spent the night at Fredo’s, but the keys were nowhere to be found. The garage doors were simply latched, but not locked. It was one of the reasons why Will didn’t like staying in a place more than once. Betting on the ghouls missing you two times in a row was asking for trouble. Betting on three days in a row was begging for it.
Dead, not stupid.
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Zoe said suddenly.
“No.”
She was trying to read his face. Will smiled back at her. He had mastered hiding his emotions years ago. Fear, happiness—things that could be tempered with the right combination of resolve and denial.
He was very aware that there was a way out of this. The hazmat suit. It was still crumpled on the floor behind his seat, where he had tossed it days ago after they escaped the camp. He could put it on and probably survive tonight. Probably. He wasn’t entirely confident that was even true. Were the ghouls ordered not to attack any hazmat suits? Or just people wearing the uniforms at certain locations?
Too many questions, too many possibilities.
Not that it mattered. There was Zoe to think about. She h
ad saved his life, even when she didn’t have to. He couldn’t pay that back now by grabbing the suit and leaving her to fend for herself. Besides, there was still a way out of this.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “I just need you to stick with me, okay?”
“I don’t want to die, Will.”
“You won’t.”
Zoe jumped at the sound of footsteps moving across the roof above them. The truck’s windows were open, as they had been for the last three days. He could hear the steady, unmistakable patter of soft, bare feet treading over wet, loose gravel.
Definitely more than one. Probably a dozen…
“Oh, God,” Zoe whispered. “What are they doing up there?”
They’re probing, looking for a weak spot.
He said instead, “I need to get behind the steering wheel, Zoe, and you need to get in the back.”
“Why?”
“Just in case.”
He could tell she wanted to ask, “Just in case of what?”, but she didn’t. Maybe she already knew, or maybe she didn’t want to know.
He grabbed her hand when he saw her reaching for the door handle. “No, just climb into the back.”
She untangled her long limbs, then slowly (and so, so cautiously) climbed into the backseat. Will slipped over and settled in behind the steering wheel. He laid the M4A1 across the front passenger seat, the stock facing him for an easy grab. He made sure he knew where the power switches for the windows were—right next to his left arm, along the driver’s side door. That was important, since both front windows were open. He wondered how long it would take them to close. Five seconds? Maybe.
Zoe had left the Ford’s key in the ignition. He could hear her letting out short, labored breaths behind him, like machine guns. He didn’t blame her. The sound of ghouls moving above them was disconcerting. He had been through it countless times, and it still got to him.
“Will?” she whispered, her voice barely audible.
“Yeah?”
“Was I wrong? For doing what I did? At the camps, with all those pregnant women?”
The question surprised him, especially since she had defended herself so well. But there were very real doubts in her voice now. Doubt, and very real regret.