by Sam Sisavath
The way it moved was undeniable: It owned this moment with every step, and it knew it.
Bright blue eyes pulsated in the darkness.
He knew this day would come. Somehow, some way, he knew it would end this way, with the two of them face to face in the middle of a lonely, dark night.
“Hello, Will,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”
CHAPTER 25
LARA
“Run!” the kid shouted.
Kid? Why was she calling him a kid? The Josh who had come back to the island after supposedly dying wasn’t a kid anymore. Far from it. The fact that he had just shot Danny with a pistol erased any doubts about that.
Lara was struggling to pick Danny up when Gaby grabbed him on the other side. They exchanged a brief look and as much of a smile as they could manage before they lifted Danny up from the cobblestone road.
“Run!” Josh was shouting behind them. “Get out of here, Gaby! Leave him, and get out of here now!”
But Gaby didn’t leave him, and Lara couldn’t be any more prouder of her. The girl who had come back to her was hardly recognizable, but it wasn’t because of the bruises and cuts. Gaby had changed. She had grown up. She might have still been nineteen, but Lara saw a woman when she looked across Danny.
She’s a soldier, Will. You’d be proud of her.
And she was going to need Gaby, too, because Danny was heavy. God, he was so heavy.
She hadn’t taken more than a few steps when the air became drenched with a nauseating smell. It was indescribable, and though she hadn’t seen them in such a long time, she knew exactly what the stench was a harbinger of even before she glanced back over her shoulder. She had to see for herself—the proof that all of this was happening, that Song Island really was lost to them.
The wall of pruned flesh moved against the night, blackening the already dark background on the other side of the open pathway. She swore she could hear them not just in front of her, but through the woods to both sides, too—the loud and stampeding crunch! of grass and the snap! and thwack! of branches assaulting every one of her senses.
“Faster,” Lara said, the word coming out in a breathless whisper. “Faster, Gaby!”
Gaby didn’t answer, but she did pick up her pace, and together they pushed their way through the four soldiers staring, a couple of them already lifting their rifles at the legion of creatures swarming down the pathway toward them.
Run! Lara wanted to shout at them. Run, you fools! Bullets don’t stop them! Even silver bullets only slow them down until the next hundred more take their place!
She didn’t, because she didn’t care what they did or didn’t do. She didn’t have any interest in their lives at all. They were the enemy—people who had come here to kill her and her friends—and she didn’t give a damn what happened to them. But a small part of her that thought maybe, just maybe, having the soldiers between her and the ghouls would slow the creatures down.
What was that old joke? “I don’t need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you!”
She wanted to laugh, but of course when she opened her mouth, the only thing that came out was harried breathing. She was already out of breath and they hadn’t even gone a few yards yet.
“Run!” someone was shouting behind them.
Josh. He wasn’t talking to her or Gaby; he couldn’t be, because they were already running. So who was he screaming at?
The soldiers. Of course.
“I can’t control them!” Josh was shouting. “Run! For God’s sake, run!”
Lara risked a second look back.
Josh was running after them even as his soldiers opened fire on the creatures bounding down the pathway at them. She had forgotten just how unnatural they looked in motion, like a flip picture book colored all in black.
“Go!” Josh shouted at her. “Don’t stop! Kate sent them! They’re not going to stop! I can’t stop them! No one can!”
“Lara, she’s coming,” Will had said. “She’s coming…”
Kate. Lara remembered how the woman had chased them from Starch, Texas to Beaumont, then all the way into Louisiana and finally, Song Island. She wouldn’t let them go. No, that wasn’t true. She was more than happy to let them go. She just wouldn’t let Will go.
You and your exes, Will, she wanted to laugh.
If Lara went another day without having to hear that creature’s name, she would die a happy woman.
As Josh chased them—no, not chased, followed—the soldiers he had abandoned were still shooting behind them. The men, anyway. The only woman among them—the twenty-something with the black ponytail—was looking after them. After Josh. There was an expression on her face that Lara had seen plenty of times before.
Hurt. Regret. Betrayed.
“The boats!” Josh shouted at her. “Get to the boats! They won’t go into the water! Get to the boats!”
Lara didn’t know what he was doing, or why. She only knew that he wasn’t shooting at them with the gun clenched in his hand, and that was all she cared about.
She turned around and got a better grip around Danny’s waist just as they stepped off the pathway and she finally—finally—felt the squishy beach under her. The sand seemed to sink under her boots and she wasn’t running nearly as fast as she had been just a second ago.
It wasn’t that she was running slower, it was Danny. He was too heavy even with her and Gaby carrying him at the same time. His head hung against his chest, his eyes closed, and sweat dripped off his temple and down his painfully pale, unresponsive face. She couldn’t help but wonder if he was already dead, if she and Gaby weren’t carrying around a dead man with them at this very moment.
Bang! Bang!
Two quick gunshots from almost directly behind her. Lara didn’t have to look back to know who was shooting. Josh. She recognized the sound of his handgun from earlier, when he’d shot Danny.
“Faster!” Josh was shouting behind them between gunshots. “Get to the boats! Gaby, get to the boats!”
Lara looked over at Gaby on the other side of Danny, but she couldn’t see the teenager past Danny’s bouncing head. She could hear Gaby’s heavy breathing just fine, though, even over the pop-pop-pop of assault rifles and Josh’s earsplitting gunshots behind them.
The water! Get to the water!
She willed herself not to look back a third time (it was hard, so hard) and kept running—or ran as much as she could, anyway. The fact was, she was mostly stumbling, Danny’s weight like a giant boulder on her shoulders. It was his feet—they were dragging across the sand like an anchor. But that couldn’t be helped. He was simply too heavy for her and Gaby to lift completely off the ground.
Josh was still firing behind them. She didn’t know why he was wasting his time. Did that handgun of his (some kind of black semiautomatic) even have silver bullets? If they didn’t, he mind as well be picking up handfuls of sand and throwing them at the ghouls for all the good he was doing.
Of course, she didn’t bother to tell him that. If he fell now, that was one more thing for the creatures to waste a precious second or two on. Another speed bump on the road to salvation.
Speed bump of the dead. Ha ha. Good one, Lara.
She might have chuckled to herself that time.
I’ve finally developed Danny’s morbid sense of humor. God help me.
They were halfway to the water when Gaby began to slow down noticeably. Lara thought about shouting encouragement when she realized the teenager was only mirroring her own flagging pace. It wasn’t just that they were both tiring, they were also literally sinking into the beach with every step.
She didn’t know why it felt as if they were running in quicksand until she looked down and saw the blood. It was all over the beach, supplied in generous amounts by the dead men that had assaulted the island. The dozens of bodies lay across the white sand, multiple jagged lines of lost lives thrown away by Kate as if they were little more than expendable sacks of meat.
That�
�s all we are to them. Meat.
What chance do we have? Why do we keep fighting—
The shooting behind them had suddenly stopped and there was just her and Gaby’s labored breathing, along with Josh’s (he was so close behind her that she swore she could feel his warm breath brushing against the back of her neck) crashing against the lapping waves in front of them.
My God, it was still so far away.
The water—she could see it, even smell and taste it in the air, but it was still so far away. Why was it so damn far away?
She thought about handing Danny off to Josh. He was a man now—bigger and taller and stronger. He could help Gaby carry Danny faster than she could. The two of them were uninjured and would have a better chance of reaching the boat than with her. Besides, she was pretty sure she was bleeding again. The question was, was it both her wounds or just one? Given how badly her night was going, it was probably both.
Her left shoulder and thigh were screaming at her at unimaginable decibels. It had started when she first picked Danny up, and it had only gotten worse—and louder—as she trudged across the length of the beach. Her shoulder in particular howled and bounced off the insides of her skull. Both of her legs were throbbing—and not just the one that was injured and wrapped in gauze at the moment.
She wanted to stop and sit down. No, lie down. That would be so much better. It was time to rest, anyway. She had been fighting for so long, and now she just wanted to stop for a moment and take a breath that wasn’t so labored that it felt as if her chest would cave in with every gasp of air.
Why fight it? We can’t win.
Why didn’t you tell me, Will? Why didn’t you ever tell me the truth?
We can’t win. We can’t—
She looked across and saw Gaby on the other side of Danny. Her face was locked in a tight grimace, and every inch of her was flushed with pain. But she hadn’t stopped—not even for a second. She pushed on, fighting through whatever physical hell was trying to suffocate her at the moment.
The sight of Gaby filled Lara with pride.
You’re right, Will. We have to keep fighting. Not just for us, but for everyone. For all the Gabys of the world. The Elises and the Veras and the Dwaynes.
Goddammit, you’re right. You’re always so damn right…
She could do it. She could take the pain and keep moving, because there were no other choices. It was stop and die, or keep moving and live. It didn’t matter if they only survived for another second. Or minute. Or hour.
Survive!
“The boat!” Josh’s voice, so much louder than before, as if he was almost on top of her. Had she and Gaby really slowed down that much? “Get on the boat!”
“Lara!” Gaby? Why was Gaby shouting at her? “Ready?”
Ready? Ready for wha—
Oh.
The boat. One of the ten boats that lined the beach, coming up on them. It was one of the smaller ones, and it had only partially slid up onto the sand before its occupants bailed. There was blood along the sides, and a man in a black uniform lay half-in and half-out of the water nearby, like a permanent fixture.
Then she did a stupid thing and looked back again.
They were coming out of the trees, an oozing black blob of moving limbs and black eyes. There wasn’t a single part of the beach behind her that she could see that wasn’t already turning black, as if someone had poured a giant bottle of ink that was now swallowing up the white sand inch by inch.
She couldn’t take her eyes off them—these impossibly twisted and emaciated things that were once human beings. Their speed was incomprehensible, and for a moment she was sure her eyes were lying to her. But no, they really were that fast, it was just that she hadn’t seen them for so long that she had forgotten.
“Lara!” Gaby’s voice again. “Hurry!”
She looked forward just as wetness swamped her feet.
Water?
The lake!
The boat wasn’t so tall that they couldn’t have climbed over without help, but Danny was heavy and all the running had tired her out, and her wounds were screaming inside her like banshees. Every inch of her ached, so Lara had no idea where both she and Gaby found the strength, but they hoisted Danny up—
—he went over and landed on the other side of the beached boat with a loud thump! that she hoped wasn’t a bad sign. To have gone through all the trouble to save him, only to have him land on something sharp, was a terrifying thought.
Gaby grabbed the side of the boat and disappeared up it with surprising fluidity. Lara wondered where she’d learned that. She’d ask her later…if there was a later.
She gripped the side and pulled herself up, somehow managing not to cry out as pain exploded across her body, her left arm feeling as if it would snap in two—or maybe three or four—pieces at any second.
She might have either cried or screamed (or both) as she climbed over the side and dropped to the floor on the other side. She didn’t remember, because she was scrambling to her knees next to Danny, who had fallen on top of an M4 rifle that had been left behind by one of the assaulters.
Lara grabbed the rifle and jerked it out from underneath Danny, then she made the mistake of looking back up the beach again.
They were still coming (of course they were, what did she think, they were going to give up when she wasn’t looking?) and there was so many that she imagined this must be what it was like to stare into the heart of a living and breathing black hole. There was nothing in front of her but death.
Josh. Where’s Josh?
Not far, as it turned out. He was in front of her, firing the last of his bullets into the incoming horde before dropping the gun.
He spun around, his face wild, screaming. “Go! Go!”
Go? she wanted to ask him. Go where? We’re stuck. The boat won’t move—
The roar of the engine filled the air as Josh rammed himself into the front of the boat. What was he doing? What—
“Go!” Josh was shouting. He was pushing and screaming, digging his boots into the sand for leverage and howling like a madman. “Go, get out of here! Get out of here!”
He was pushing them back into the water.
She didn’t know how he was doing it. This skinny kid who had come to her and Will months ago, who couldn’t do much of anything right. It was Gaby who had saved his life not once, but twice, because Josh was one of those kids in school who you ignored. He was average in every way—not tall enough, not big enough, and certainly not handsome enough for a girl like Gaby—and there shouldn’t have been any possible way he could actually be pushing the boat back into the water.
“Josh, what are you doing?” Gaby screamed, most of it lost over the roar of the outboard motor.
The boat kept moving, because Josh was still pushing even though she couldn’t see him in front of the vessel anymore.
This isn’t possible. How is this even possible?
And the beach got darker and darker, until there was nothing left—
Then the sound of the motor changed noticeably as the propeller finally found water to churn against, and the boat was now reversing faster off the beach and into the lake.
She could finally see Josh again. He stood on the beach, his legs buried in the sand up to his knees. He was looking after them, gasping for breath, his chest heaving with all the effort and strain of what he had just done. And yet there was something strange on his face.
It wasn’t fear. Or terror.
Was he smiling? No, not smiling. Josh was beaming as he looked back at her—or maybe he was trying to find Gaby behind her. That was probably it. At that moment, Lara didn’t think she actually existed in the teenager’s eyes. He was so serene, as if his entire life had led to this moment and he had finally achieved something that had eluded him all this time.
Then he was gone.
Josh disappeared under the tidal wave of surging pruned flesh and hollow eyes. He didn’t scream, but simply vanished under the pile of twisted lim
bs and blackened flesh, as if he had never existed at all.
But Josh had done it. The boat was reversing at faster speeds, moving back, back, back from the beach and away from the unending tide of creatures that blanketed it—
Not all the creatures were converging on Josh. There wasn’t enough space for all of them, so the rest kept coming. She didn’t know what they were doing.
The water. They couldn’t go into the water…could they?
As she looked on, breathless, one of the ghouls launched itself into the air and at the boat. It spilled against the side of the vessel and groped desperately for something to hold onto, but couldn’t, and went tumbling into the water.
Two—no, three more—catapulted themselves at the V-shaped front of the boat, but they too didn’t land at the right spots and failed to find something to hold onto and disappeared over the side.
The rest began plop-plop-plopping into the lake around them. They looked like kamikaze pilots sailing through the night air only to miss their target. She watched them sink into the lake water and thrash about. A few managed to break the surface again, only to drop back under like…stones?
She was still staring off the side, trying to process what she was seeing (The water! They really can’t survive in the water!), when one of them sailed across the distance and managed to land on the boat in a ball of clacking bones. It rolled forward and slammed into the bench in front of the steering console, unraveling its limbs.
As soon as it lifted its head, Lara shoved the barrel of the M4 toward it and pulled the trigger. The first half dozen bullets obliterated its eyes and nose and mouth, and the next half dozen shattered its skull and sent it stumbling back, back. She didn’t expect it to go down (no silver bullets), and it didn’t disappoint her.
Mostly headless now, it continued coming.
Lara spun the rifle around and smashed the stock into its chest. That, more than the bullets, made it reel backward. She followed it and hit it again, this time aiming for what remained of its lower jaw, sticking out like one half of a crushed watermelon. That kept it staggering back and off balance. She hit it a third time on the side of its leftover “head” and heard the stock of her rifle cracking with the impact.