by Sam Sisavath
“Stay down,” the man named Lou said. “Willie’s fine; he’s just taking a nap in the bathroom. You’ll be, too, as long as you stay out of my way.”
Keo stood up on his tiptoes and peered down at Barry, crumpled on the floor next to the door, as Lou knelt down and rifled through his pockets. Barry was still alive, but his face had turned blue as he struggled to breathe.
Lou found what he was looking for—a key—and stood up. He turned around and looked into the security glass at Keo. Late thirties, red beard, and hard brown eyes pierced the peephole. He had an AK-47 slung over his back, and there were still remnants of white paint on his face where a skull used to be before he had washed it off.
“Lou,” one of the men who had dragged Keo through the woods earlier had said. “This guy just shanked his brother. We better tell Pollard. There’s no telling what Lou’s gonna do to this guy. I’ve seen him do things…”
Keo took a step back as Lou unlocked the door and pushed it open. He stood in the bright hallway, one hand on the butt of his sidearm, and didn’t make any further move to enter the room. He was shorter than Keo, but he made up for it with broad shoulders and muscle. The guy outweighed him by fifty pounds easily.
“You don’t know me, do you?” Lou asked.
Sure I do, I shoved a knife into your little brother’s chest, Keo thought, but he figured he needed to stall for time, so he said instead, “No.”
“Lou,” the man said.
“What’s this about, Lou?”
“I had a brother. Chris. You remember him, don’t you?”
“I don’t know any Chris.”
Stall for time.
And then what?
Good question…
Lou took his hand away from his sidearm and pulled a sheathed Ka-Bar knife from behind his back. He pulled the blade out, the hallway light glinting off the sharp edge. “You recognize this?”
Keo did, but he shook his head anyway. “A knife’s a knife. What about it?”
“It’s my brother’s. It belonged to Chris. You killed him with it this afternoon. You remember now?”
Keo stared back at Lou, saw the pain, anger, and hatred glaring back at him. He looked past Lou at Barry, lying on the floor, the LED lamp hanging from a hook nailed into the wall. Poor Barry was either dead or unconscious, because he wasn’t moving at all. His face was covered in blood that had drooled out of his shattered nose.
Keo’s eyes shifted back to Lou. “So what is this, revenge?”
“Yeah,” Lou said. He tossed the sheath to the floor and tightened his grip on the knife. “That’s exactly what this is.”
“You took out both of my guards just to get to me? I’m flattered. But I’m not sure Pollard’s going to be very happy with you. From what I hear, he can be a real hard ass when people disappoint him.”
“I don’t give a shit what Pollard says,” Lou said, spitting out the words.
Oh, I can see that. You clearly don’t give a shit anymore, my friend.
“Why should he be the only one who gets his pound of flesh?” Lou said. He clutched and unclutched the knife handle. “I’m going to make you scream, and no one’s going to stop me.”
Keo’s eyes fixed on the open door behind Lou.
There. That was his way out.
Literally, in this case.
Who says I can’t come up with a plan?
Oh right, everyone.
“Do you even remember him?” Lou asked. “Do you even remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Keo said, and stared right back at Lou. “He was a little bitch, your brother. He started crying when I punched that knife through his chest—”
Lou lunged, the Ka-Bar slashing, his face locked in a half-scream.
CHAPTER 13
The Ka-Bar knife had a seven-inch straight-edge blade with a five-inch brown leather handle. It weighed just barely half a pound and had a serrated section near the guard for tough cutting. It was a sharp and highly effective fighting knife, and it was the reason Keo had been carrying one around ever since he had picked it up from Earl’s basement. This one wasn’t Keo’s—his had a black handle—but it sure as hell looked just as capable of eviscerating him.
He jumped back and twisted sideways as Lou struck, shooting the knife forward at him. Lou moved with surprising swiftness for a guy carrying his bulk, and Keo was preparing himself for the follow-up attack as soon as the knife missed its mark. Even so, he wasn’t quite ready when Lou threw a shoulder into his chest, knocking him into the empty shelf along the wall.
Lou was operating on what Keo called Primal Mode. He was out of control and nowhere close to thinking about his next move before doing it. He was letting his emotions dictate his every action, and that made him predictable. All Keo had to do was let the man do all the hard work and overexert himself.
When the first strike didn’t connect, Lou tried again, cutting from right to left this time (a predictable move, because it was also the most obvious choice), the arc of the knife slashing from waist-level to shoulder blade. Keo spun out of the way easily and the Ka-Bar clanged! against the metal shelves, throwing sparks into the darkened room for just a split-second. Keo wondered if anyone outside the closet had heard that. The last thing he wanted was Pollard’s people to rush down the hallway and stop this.
Okay, time to finish this.
Before Lou could bring his arm back for a third try, Keo grabbed it at the wrist and pinned the knife hand against the shelf. He slammed the palm of his left hand into Lou’s right arm, just below the elbow, and heard the satisfying crack! of Lou’s arm breaking at the elbow joint.
Lou’s scream vibrated through the entire building.
Oh, great. Everyone definitely heard that.
Keo silenced Lou by wrapping the fingers of his right hand around the man’s wrist, pulling it back, then twisting the lifeless broken arm backward. Lou knew what Keo was trying to do and attempted to let go of the knife, but Keo wouldn’t let him. He tightened Lou’s fingers around the handle and guided the point of the Ka-Bar into Lou’s chest. It was, he thought, about the same spot where he had also killed Lou’s brother earlier in the woods…and with the same knife, too.
Lou’s legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor, Keo hanging over him until the very last second, when he finally let go of the sagging body.
“Sorry about your brother,” Keo said.
Lou gasped up at him like a fish on dry land. His useless right arm lay helplessly at his side while he groped at the knife handle with his left, trying in vain to pull it out. Either he didn’t have the strength or he had forgotten how to do something as simple as pull.
Keo stopped paying attention to the dying Lou. He could hear footsteps almost right away, pounding down the hallway along with someone screaming orders.
“I need your gun,” Keo said.
He grabbed Lou and turned him over onto his side and pulled the AK-47 off him. Lou might have made a noise, but Keo wasn’t listening to him anymore. He focused on the world outside the door as he fumbled with the assault vest and pulled out two spare magazines and stuffed them into his pockets.
He looked up just in time to see Norris opening his eyes and staring back at him. “So this is your plan?”
Keo grinned. “Stay put.”
“He dead?” His eyes were on Lou’s gasping form.
“Soon.”
“Okay,” Norris said, and closed his eyes and seemed to fall back to sleep.
Keo flicked the fire selector on the AK-47 to full-auto and stepped over Lou’s body and headed for the door. He stuck his head out and looked left, saw the window at the end about two meters away, right where he expected it to be. It was barricaded with pieces of lumber that covered up the entire frame, and a large metal filing cabinet was laid over the whole thing as additional reinforcement. Keo couldn’t see a single stream of moonlight penetrating the makeshift shield.
Turning right was a different story: Three men with rifles were rushing down
the hallway at full speed. They looked like ghosts moving among the shadows that dominated the passageway, running in and out of a pair of LED lights hanging in their path.
He stepped outside, legs on either side of Barry’s prone form, and opened fire on them. He dropped two with the first pull. The third somehow managed to duck the volley, turned, and started running back in the direction he had come.
Keo fired another burst and knocked the man off his feet just as he was about to reach the turn. He spilled to the floor and actually slid along it for a few feet before coming to rest.
Yeah, everyone definitely heard that, too.
He turned and ran straight for the barricaded window. He grabbed the metal cabinet and pulled it loose from the wall, then stepped quickly aside as it toppled. Keo was already smashing the stock of the AK-47 against the wooden slabs even before the cabinet hit the floor, spilling drawers with the kind of racket that could be heard from every part of the building.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
The AK-47 was easily one of the world’s most durable weapons ever invented by man. Originally put into production by the Soviets in 1949, it continued to be employed with great effectiveness on battlefields around the world six decades later. There wasn’t a part of the planet Keo had done work in that didn’t have piles of the rifle. It was both amazing and a bane of his existence.
The one Keo was wielding now had a wooden buttstock with a steel butt plate, and as he rammed it repeatedly against what looked like a repurposed countertop, he could feel the weapon disintegrating in his hands. But even as the assault rifle slowly chipped, it was cratering his target, until—
Thwack!
The first board broke in half, and Keo saw a pair of dark black eyes peering in at him through the opening. There was no glass on the other side because it had been broken months ago. The creature reached in almost as soon as the small section of makeshift wall collapsed under the pounding from the AK-47.
Keo moved over to his left and started working on another piece of countertop, even as hands—one, two, three—fumbled and grabbed and tried to punch and pull and push their way through the opening. Keo ignored them—not an easy feat, because they were right in front of him and he could smell them—and kept flailing at the next piece of the barricade.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
He did his best to ignore the stench, the fact that there could very well be hundreds of the monsters outside the window at this very moment, seeing him, trying to claw their way in to get at him, their frenzied state heightened beyond belief—
Thwack!
A second board broke a split-second before a loud crack! exploded across the hallway and a bullet smashed into the wall an inch to the left of his head.
Keo dropped to the floor and spun around just as four figures rushed up the flickering darkness. They were already halfway to his position and were aiming when Keo threw himself forward and slid along the smooth tiled floor. His momentum carried him all the way to the open janitor’s closet door, where he grabbed the doorframe and pulled himself inside, just barely avoiding sliding into Barry’s unmoving body.
He twisted onto his back—which was faster than getting up—and slid against the opening. Instead of paying attention to the men approaching him from his right, he looked left and opened fire on the window.
He wasn’t aiming at the gaping hole he had created earlier, or at the dozens of skeletal black arms trying to tear their way inside—or the ocean of quivering black flesh already visible in the center—but at the pieces of the barricade still in place. He fired on full-auto, pouring everything left in the magazine into the same general area.
Behind him, he glimpsed the men slowing down before stopping completely and going into a crouch against the walls. One had flopped to the floor on his stomach. He guessed they had no idea what he was doing, but was reluctant to keep coming when they could see he was armed and shooting.
When he was empty, he shoved in a new magazine and immediately started firing again. He concentrated this new group of rounds on different sections, weakening the boards one at a time. Then one of the creatures managed to push a large slab free and it tumbled to the floor, and now two of them were pushing their heads through the newly formed opening, just big enough for a full-size bloodsucker to come through.
The first creature dropped through the hole and plopped on the hallway floor. Another one was already squeezing through behind it, even as another bullet-riddled slab of wood was forced free from the wall.
Gunfire clattered from nearby and bullets smashed into the creatures. Five of them found their mark against the first bloodsucker that had managed to fall through the opening, and the undead thing jerked as rounds slammed into it. There was a ping! as a bullet ricocheted off bone and smacked into a nearby wall.
Not that it did any good in stopping the tide. They were coming through the window, pushing against the remaining barricade. And each time one of them made it inside, bullets poured into it, some punching through their weak flesh and hitting the wood or wall behind them.
Two were inside now.
Then three.
Then four—
Ten—
Keo grabbed the lever above him and swung the door shut. It closed with a loud bang! just as the first creature slammed into it from the other side. The lever in his hand quivered as the bloodsucker attempted to push it open, but he was stronger. He couldn’t lock it from this side, so Keo hung on for dear life instead. Thank God dying (re-dying?) hadn’t given them any extra strength, or else he would be screwed right about now.
He ignored the balled black fists that began whaling on the security glass above his head. The window cracked, but the noise was quickly drowned out by the overwhelming gunfire exploding up and down the hallway outside.
Then the entire length of the building shook violently under the noise and fury as the black-eyed monsters began rushing past the closet door. He could hear them, the tap-tap-tap of their bare feet against the tiled floor like a stampeding herd.
Keo kept his head down and watched the pool of LED light shining under the door flickering wildly as the bloodsuckers ran across. Then slowly, inch by inch, the light faded. No, not faded. It was simply being overwhelmed by the number of creatures right outside his door at this very second.
Moments later, the screaming started…
*
Lou died while Keo was outside trying to open up the window so the creatures could flood the building. The dead man lay perfectly still in a small pool of blood, the Ka-Bar still embedded in his chest.
“Live by the Ka-Bar, die by the Ka-Bar.”
Wasn’t that the old saying?
Close enough.
Random thoughts like that kept Keo from hearing the screaming beyond the janitor’s closet door. The creatures had stopped trying to get at him through the small security glass window. One or two had sliced themselves on the remaining shards, but the opening was too narrow for anything bigger than an arm. After a while they stopped trying, especially when there was other, easier prey elsewhere.
The screams and gunfire went on, nonstop, for nearly two hours. Keo didn’t know how Pollard’s men could keep up the pace for so long. Eventually, everything seemed to come to a grinding halt, and there was only the occasional gunshot. For him it seemed to have taken less than half an hour, but he imagined it must have felt like an eternity for the people going through it.
He could hear them still moving in the hallway. The LED lamp was gone, either turned off (unlikely) or broken during the initial surge. But there was still moonlight shining through the small window behind him, enough for Keo to see the puddles of blood that had leaked into the room through the slit under the door. Maybe some of that even came from Barry, the guard that Lou had incapacitated earlier.
Keo hung onto the door lever all night, shifting his position every ten minutes to keep from becoming complacent. They hadn’t tried to force their way in since the first hour of the invasion, but ev
ery now and then he felt the lever moving slightly.
Probing. They’re always probing…
Sometime around midnight (at least according to his internal clock), Keo stood up and sneaked a peek through the broken security glass and at the hallway outside. He did it tentatively, fully expecting one of the creatures to pop up and give him a good scare like in the movies. What were the rules of surviving a horror flick?
“Don’t go into the basement!”
“Don’t split up!”
“Don’t look out into the hallway full of bloodsucking creatures!”
He looked through the 1x1 square hole. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the semidarkness on the other side. If not for the moonlight pouring in through the now-open window, he wouldn’t have been able to see the bloody footprints that covered the floor, so many that it was impossible to tell the tiled lines apart from the deformed footprints.
He could hear them moving around outside the door—sense them—but he couldn’t actually see them. They were concentrated further up the hallway to his right, where the bulk of Pollard’s people were gathered for the night. Where the offices were.
How many were still alive, hiding inside those rooms right now? One? Two? A dozen? Maybe none. Had Pollard himself made it?
How many more hours left? Six, give or take, before dawn?
“It’s always bloodiest before the dawn.”
Wasn’t that the old saying?
Close enough.
*
“We’re alive,” Norris said, opening his eyes.
“You sound surprised,” Keo said. “I told you I’d get us out of here.”
“How the hell are we still alive?”
“Because I’m good.”
“Good, or just really lucky?”
Keo grinned. “Same difference. Bottom line is, we’re still alive.”