by Ty Drago
It wasn’t enough.
As the Burgermeister and I watched, the Corpses gave a final heave and rolled the struggling SUV onto its side.
“Will!” Dave yelled.
“I see it!” I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal. “Get ready!”
Our Tacoma reached the Escape within seconds, its engine noise masked by that of the SUV, which roared like a toppled elephant. Though the windshield hadn’t broken, I still couldn’t see the girls. It was just too dark.
“Now!” I told Dave.
He extended his right arm, axe-point horizontal against the slipstream.
I drove past the Escape at high speed, having picked an angle that would put most of the Corpses between us and them.
Their heads exploded as the pickaxe hit them. The impacts would probably have torn my arm off. But Dave’s arm wasn’t mine and, though he gritted his teeth, he kept steady.
Three heads. Four. Five.
Not bad.
Then the rest scattered.
“Helene!” I yelled.
“Sharyn!” he yelled.
No answers.
I slammed on the brakes, put the truck in park, and we both climbed out. I jumped up onto the Escape’s upended flank and grabbed the passenger side door handle. At the same time, the Burgermeister came around the front of the SUV, leaning over to peer through the windshield.
I’d expected the car door to be locked. It wasn’t, but instead opened so wide that I almost toppled backward off the Escape’s slippery side and down to the grass. Luckily, I managed to grab onto the doorframe and steady myself.
“We’re okay!” came a voice from inside the car. It sounded weak.
“Helene?”
“I’m here!”
“I’m here too, little bro!” Sharyn added. “Thanks for asking!”
“Dave, they’re okay!”
The Burgermeister let out a sound halfway between a grunt and a cheer. “So, get ‘em out!” he yelled.
I reached my hand down to Sharyn, but she shook her head. “Can’t do it. My leg’s pinned under the seat and Helene’s belt buckle’s jammed. We’ll need a couple minutes.”
Dave exclaimed, “Get clear. I’ll break the glass!”
“Don’t!” Sharyn yelled. “You’ll cut us both up!”
“Will,” Helene told me. I could just see her now, little more than a shape among shadows. “Go! We’re fine!”
“I’m not leaving you! There’s more of them! And a helicopter!”
“Listen to me, Ritter!” the girl called back. “Haven’s in trouble. Your mom. Your sister. My sister. We don’t know how much time they’ve got. It might already be too late. Go!”
She was right. As horrible as it was, she was absolutely, one hundred percent right.
Maybe dead right.
That was when I glanced over at the helicopter, and my heart stopped beating.
It did. I swear it did.
A Corpse was climbing out.
A female Corpse. A Type One.
I exclaimed, “Cavanaugh’s here!”
“Red,” Sharyn told me, her tone totally calm, totally in control. “You gotta get to that Anchor Shard. This ain’t ‘bout us. It ain’t even ‘bout Haven. It’s ‘bout everything, all of it. You gotta leave us. Now.”
The Queen was scanning the battleground. We had maybe five seconds before she spotted the toppled SUV. After that, she’d be on us like a hungry cheetah.
Hating it, and hating myself for doing it, I jumped off the SUV. “Come on, Dave,” I said flatly as I pulled his backpack and Kimball’s duffel out of the Tacoma.
The big kid looked from me to Sharyn, and then back to me. “But, Will—”
“Hot Dog!” Sharyn yelled through the windshield. “Get it done. It’s cool!” Then, after a beat she added, “I love you.”
For a moment, I didn’t think he’d come. And I don’t think I would have blamed him. But then, with more pain on his face than I’d ever seen there, he followed after me and we ran for the East Magazine.
We reached the brick entranceway, staying low, trying to keep the truck and the toppled SUV between us and the helicopter—
—staying out of Cavanuagh’s line of sight.
We almost made it.
“Ritter!” I heard just as we ducked into the entranceway.
“Run!” I told Dave, handing him his backpack and pushing him ahead of me.
A tight left turn, followed by a tight right turn.
Then came the large chamber lit by a single arc lamp. Brick walls. High arched ceiling. And a newly constructed cinderblock wall, cutting the room’s length in half, broken by a single door.
A heavy metal door.
Like a freaking submarine door. You know: the kind with a big wheel in the center instead of a doorknob.
And a thick chain and combination lock holding the wheel in place.
The Burgermeister uttered some words I didn’t think anyone would approve of. Then he turned to me, sweat glistening on his brow. “You gotta pick the lock, dude.”
“I can’t,” I said, holding up my pocketknife. “This only works on keyholes, not combo locks.”
It was totally Cavanaugh. Keys could be lost or stolen, but combinations were numbers that stayed safe in her head.
“We gotta get in there!” Dave exclaimed.
“So get us in there!” I yelled back.
He held up his right arm. “Oh.”
“I’ll guard your six.”
I turned toward the Magazine’s narrow entrance, my Taser and knife in one hand, a water pistol in the other.
Behind me, I heard the Burgermeister’s pickaxe strike the chain. A loud clank. Metal on metal.
“Damn!” he cried.
“Keep trying!” I told him.
“Mr. Ritter?”
I leveled my pistol, but the voice had come from around the bend—just out of sight.
“What are you up to in there, Mr. Ritter?”
Answer or not answer?
I decided to answer.
“Nothing,” I called back. “Never mind us. Just sightseeing.”
“I rather doubt it,” she said. “What did that traitor Dillin tell you?”
Behind me, the pickaxe came down a second time. Loud. Dave cursed again.
“Who?” I asked.
She chuckled—an awful sound. But, behind it, I thought maybe I heard a little fear. “I’m prepared to be generous with you, Mr. Ritter,” she said. “Just walk out of there and I’ll let you go.”
I waited ten seconds. Stalling.
Dave struck again. “Crap.”
“Mr. Ritter?” the Queen cooed. “This is a limited-time offer, and the clock is ticking.”
I looked at the Burgermeister. He looked at me, his right arm raised for another blow.
I nodded.
The pickaxe came down. The lock shattered. The chain rattled as it fell to the floor.
I turned back to the entrance.
“Nice offer,” I told the shadows beyond the turn in the entranceway. “Thing is: there’s something I’ve always wanted to say to you, and now seems like the right time.”
“Ritter … I’m warning you …”
I grinned and raised my pistol higher.
“Drop dead.”
Behind me, the Burgermeister remarked, “Good line.” Then he spun the wheel and pulled the heavy door open.
“No!” the Queen of the Dead roared in Deadspeak, the single telepathic word drilling into my brain.
Then she appeared.
I fired, but I wasn’t even close to fast enough. Cavanaugh moved in a blur, knocking me over as she exploded past me.
Dave stood in the open doorway, his attention fixed on something that I couldn’t see.
He’d just started to turn when the Queen hit him, slamming him up against the wall, nearly lifting the huge kid off his feet. His backpack crunched loudly wit
h the impact. Dave tried to swing his pickaxe, but she caught his forearm in an iron grip, her other hand on his throat.
“Clever little attachment you’ve got there, child,” she said through clenched teeth. “Had a little accident, did we?”
Then she let go of his forearm and grabbed the head of the axe, giving it a savage tug.
The Burgermeister cried out in pain as the leather straps snapped.
I climbed to my feet in time to see her throw the boy to the ground, toss the pickaxe across the room, and then turn to face me.
I fired my pistol.
Cavanaugh tried to dodge, but the saltwater caught her on one arm. I watched it go limp.
Snarling, she came at me, all power and menace.
But, lying on the ground at her feet, Dave caught her ankle with his only remaining hand, tripping her up.
She landed hard, losing several teeth on the Magazine’s floor.
I fired again, this time catching her in the back of the head with my final squirt. She started to convulse.
“You okay?” I called to the Burgermeister.
“Yeah,” he said, struggling to his feet, no easy task with only a stump for a right hand. He looked dazed.
I ran up and slammed my Taser into Cavanaugh’s back, giving her a good long zap. I wanted to keep it there—a minute, maybe more—which would cost her that nice host body she was wearing.
But we didn’t have time.
Straightening, I stared through the open door.
The Rift.
It was much like the hole in the world that Steve had made, only bigger—a shimmering, jagged black nothing that floated in mid-air, almost right up against the East Magazine’s back wall.
This was it. The source of the invasion. The door that the Malum used to enter our world. Close it and it was over. No more would come. And the ones already here would die. Finally and forever die.
Including this monstrosity on the floor.
I ducked my head in and turned to the right. There, fitted into a niche beside the door, sat the Anchor Shard. The crystal was about the same size as ours, though shaped a little differently. And it was connected to six—count ‘em—six car batteries.
Cavanaugh, knowing the stakes, had taken no chances.
“Um … dude?”
Something in Dave’s voice made me turn.
In his hand, he held the MacDonald, the guillotine-like gadget that we were going to use to “time-delay cut” the cables powering the Shard.
Well, he held part of it, anyway.
The gadget had been in the Burgermeister’s backpack when Cavanaugh had slammed him against the wall.
Now Dave stared down at its broken pieces, which had tumbled to the floor at his feet. On his face was a look of absolute, hopeless despair.
Oh God.
Chapter 46
KILLING FLOOR
Tom
When Tom reached the southern entrance, he found it a war zone.
The Corpses, after taking losses in the hundreds, had eventually reached the old service door, climbing over the bodies of their peeps to do it. Fueled by rage and Cole’s ferocious discipline, they’d hammered at the door until, finally, it was torn away.
Then they’d come in.
Tom counted maybe a dozen of them, mostly Types Threes and Fours. Not the crack warriors—most of those probably had gone down in the sewer-saltwater.
But bad enough.
And worse, they were just the beginning. Beyond the open doorway, he could see dozens, maybe hundreds more. The only thing keeping them out, keeping Haven from being completely overwhelmed, was the fact that most of the combat was going on right here, at the threshold, stopping up the works.
The Undertakers were fighting as best they could with whatever weapons remained at hand. The air cannons were out of ammo—useless. The Super Soakers were all empty. They were down to water pistols, Dillin Daggers, and clubs of one kind or another.
And they were losing.
Turning the corner, Tom took all this in within seconds. Then, cupping his hands around his mouth, he yelled at the top of his voice, “Fall back! Undertakers! Fall back!”
But combat was noisy, and not all of them heard.
Those who did hear started the retreat. And those who heard but weren’t in a position to do anything about it kept fighting. Kid after kid went down, until the floor was littered with small human bodies.
Tom felt his stomach flip-flop, but not with nausea.
With guilt.
I blew it. I’ve killed them all.
But then that unhelpful thought buried itself in the back of his mind. It would stay there until later when, if he survived, he could pull it out again and decide for himself if it was true.
He had other priorities.
Aunt Sally was hooked to his belt. For now, he left it there. He only had six Dillinbolts, and something told him he would need them.
So instead, with his pocketknife in one hand, he snatched up a length of lead pipe that one of the fighters had dropped.
Then he waded in.
He spotted Katie. The girl was pressed up against the wall, just inside the shattered entrance. Two Corpses were on her, their arms swinging and their teeth snapping.
Tom went to her rescue, bashing deaders to his left and right. When one got close, Tom gave him a zap in the eye and he went down. When another leaped up and grabbed him by the throat with rotting hands, Tom rammed the pipe into his gaping mouth with such force that it exploded out the back of the Corpse’s skull.
He reached the two who were attacking Katie, hammered one with the pipe and rammed his knife blade into the other’s brain stem. Both dropped like sacks of sand. Katie looked up at him, her face cut and bruised, her eyes glassy with fear.
“You solid?”
She blinked. Then, she said in a shaky voice, “I think so. But Tom … there’s so many!”
“I know.”
Tom spun in a circle, beating down two more deaders in the process. One of them dropped, but then latched onto his ankle, biting deeply into the flesh of his calf. Pain lanced up his leg, making him cry out.
Then Tom pivoted and slammed his other foot down against the Corpse’s temple. The dead dude’s skull caved in.
“Get everyone back,” he told Katie. “Toward the Infirmary. Grab the wounded. Bring ‘em along.”
“But they’ll be on us, Chief! Every step of the way!”
“No, they won’t. Go!”
She nodded and started yelling at the others to fall back.
Meanwhile, Tom pulled Aunt Sally off his belt.
It wasn’t a practical weapon, not against these numbers. But right now his priority was to give Katie and her crew time to retreat and regroup.
But … where’s Jillian?
As three more Corpses piled through the ruined doorway, he kicked one hard in the chest, knocking him back into his friends. Then he took aim and fired a Dillinbolt into another’s midsection.
The deader squealed in terror as the salted metal bolt perforated his stomach.
At the same time, two more Corpses came at Tom from behind. Sensing them, he ducked under a swinging arm and came up with his knife, planting it in the first one’s forehead. The second one he tripped, caught it in a one-armed headlock, and twisted.
The Corpse’s neck snapped.
At the same instant, the deader he’d “Dillined” exploded.
“Keep going!” Katie yelled to the other Undertakers.
How many more were behind him? Three? Four? With hundreds in front?
This was beginning to seem like a really bad idea.
So he backed himself up against the side wall and fired his next bolt into the chest of the freshest-looking cadaver. The creature groaned and spun around, grabbing onto one of his buds, as if that would help.
The Corpse exploded. Parts rained everywhere. As with the first, a vague man-sized shape appea
red where the monster had been. It was already dying.
For a moment, the deaders all stopped, looking at the apparition with what seemed to be genuine horror.
“We call ‘em Dillinbolts!” Tom announced. “And that’s what happens when I stick you with one. No new host. No rising to fight again. Just dead. Real, solid, permanent dead.”
A nearby Corpse hissed, “You can’t kill us all, boy!”
Tom shot him in the gut.
Then as the third one popped like a meat balloon, he took aim again.
“Nope,” he admitted. “But I can kill whoever takes the next step!”
Then, focusing Aunt Sally’s attention over all of them at once, he slowly maneuvered himself until he stood at the mouth of the corridor, with all of the Corpses in front and the fleeing Undertakers at his back.
The deaders watched him, hissing and snarling.
But none of them moved.
Standoff.
Then a voice said, “Chief Jefferson.”
Cole appeared in the doorway, throwing hesitant Corpses aside like rag dolls. He was still in his Type One body, fresh and strong and fast. He grinned as he stood there, unafraid and in total control.
“Look at me, boy,” he said, emerging into the corridor, into Haven. “I took a step!”
“Yeah, you did,” Tom muttered.
Then he fired.
Cole’s hand shot up and caught the bolt.
Still smiling, he dropped it to the floor.
And took another step forward.
“You have courage, Undertaker,” he said. “And you’ve managed to instill that courage in your people. My compliments.”
Tom took aim and fired.
Cole grabbed a nearby Corpse and, to the deader’s horror, used him as an inhuman shield. The Dillinbolt caught the dead guy in his chest. Laughing, Cole tossed him aside, where he exploded.
Tom had one shot left.
“Better make it count, Chief,” the Corpse commander told him, sidestepping two more of his soldiers, who skittered nervously away. They’d seen what he’d done to the last dude who’d come within reach. “A child general,” Cole remarked, sounding amused. “I’m amazed it’s taken the Queen this long to exterminate you, despite your obvious talents.”
Tom raised Aunt Sally and leveled it at the deader’s torso.