Rooster

by Sam Sisavath

  Rest while you can, pal. You might not get the chance later on.

  “How many did you see out there, exactly?” Keo asked the teenagers. He needed them to focus on the immediate danger—the ghouls—and not the potential threat of one another.

  “A lot,” Brett said. “There was a lot.”

  Scarlett was sitting on the other side of Brett, who was camped about five feet to Keo’s right. The girl was leaning her head against the boy’s shoulder, and they were clearly a couple by the way their hands kept finding one another’s.

  Lovers of the apocalypse. Cute.

  I hope it works out better for you two than it did for me, kids.

  “How many is a lot?” Keo asked.

  “I haven’t seen so many in one place since that first year,” Brett said. “I didn’t even know there were that many of them still out there, after The Walk Out.”

  “There were so many,” Scarlett said. She was staring at the door. “One second there was nothing, then they were everywhere.”

  “It’s out there right now, with that horde, looking for you. Whether we’re still in Cordine City or not, it’ll find you.”

  Fucking horde is right, Greengrass.

  Pressley, sitting seven or so feet to Keo’s left, remained silent. But like the teenagers, her eyes remained fixed on the door in front of them. The shooting on the other side had lessened noticeably, with only the occasional pop, and even those seemed to be coming from farther and farther away.

  “What exactly happened out there?” Keo asked. “What did you guys see?”

  Brett shook his head but didn’t say anything right away. He looked thoughtful—either that, or was having difficulty trying to remember what he’d seen.

  Scarlett lifted her head off Brett’s shoulder. “They came out of nowhere and attacked the city. Like the night just spat them out. We saw some people running over here, and we followed them. Did you see anyone?” She glanced around. “Some of them must have made it down here before us.”

  They did, Keo thought, remembering the three he and Pressley had stumbled into in the hallway earlier. He recalled the look of shock on their faces and had attributed that to seeing him and Pressley out and free, but maybe they were just surprised to see anyone down here at all because they were fleeing what was happening beyond the facility.

  “Not sure, but we didn’t see anyone,” Keo lied.

  He thought he might have heard Pressley stifling a cough to his left, but that could have just been his imagination. Or maybe Pressley was thinking the same thing he was: how long before either kid discovered the bodies in the other wings of the building? Of course, he could always find a way to keep them here in front of the door until sunup. Now that was going to take some verbal gymnastics.

  “They might be around somewhere,” Keo continued. “How big is this facility, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Scarlett said. “We weren’t really supposed to come down here. I think it’s an old bomb shelter that the people who were in Cordine City during The Purge used to hide from the ghouls. After The Walk Out, we mostly used it for storage.”

  Storage? I guess that’s one way to label a prison.

  “Winston,” Brett said.

  “What about him?” Keo asked.

  “I think he might have had an office down here. Did you see him? Is he still alive?”

  “I don’t know, kid. Sorry.”

  “I can’t believe no one else made it down here except us.”

  “Everyone knows this place is probably the most secure building in the city,” Scarlett said. “That’s why people were running toward it. I know that’s why Brett and I did.”

  “Wait, we’re not inside the city?” Pressley asked.

  “We’re on the outskirts,” Scarlett said.

  So that’s why the shooting sounds so distant, Keo thought. The fighting’s still going on; just not directly above us.

  “We saw a lot of people out there—some on horses, some in cars—trying to make it here,” Brett said. “I saw them going down. I’m not even sure how we made it.” He looked over at Scarlett and squeezed her hand. “But I’m glad we did.”

  Scarlett smiled and laid her head back on his shoulder.

  “Your guns,” Keo said. “They’re loaded with silver ammo?”

  “Yeah,” Brett said. “Everyone’s is. Why?”

  “Just wanted to make sure, that’s all.”

  “Are yours?”

  Keo nodded and refrained from telling Brett that his and Pressley’s weapons were loaded with the right ammo because they were Cordine City guns. That answer, though, would have needed an explanation—or, at least, the kind of talk Keo didn’t think any of them needed to explore at the moment.

  “We’re good,” Keo said.

  “Your guns all have silver bullets, but there were still too many of them for the city to take out?” Pressley said. There was something in her voice that made Keo flinch just a little bit—it sounded almost...condescending?

  “There were just too many of them,” Brett said.

  Either the lanky teen hadn’t heard the same thing from Pressley’s voice that Keo had, or he was willing to let it go. Or, maybe, the slightly offending tone was all in Keo’s head. That was entirely possible, though Keo didn’t buy it.

  “It didn’t matter how many we killed; more just took their place,” Brett was saying. “They came out of nowhere.”

  “That’s what guards are for,” Pressley said. “You didn’t have guards watching the perimeter?”

  “We did…”

  “Then how did they get inside the city so easily?”

  “Easily? Who said anything about easily?” Brett’s voice had risen noticeably, either because he was getting angry or he had finally noticed Pressley’s unkind tone. “There were just too many of them. Which part of that don’t you understand, lady?”

  Before Pressley could respond to Brett, Keo said, “There’s always too many of them. You kids did the right thing by making your way here. It was the smartest thing you could have done.”

  Keo looked over at Pressley and narrowed his eyes. She gave him a What? look, but turned away and kept her mouth shut.

  Keep it that way, woman. Jesus Christ. You trying to get me killed here?

  “There were so many,” Scarlett was saying. She sounded very tired, like all the energy had been drained from her. “How are there still so many of them left? I thought The Walk Out killed most of them. We all thought that. We all thought it was over, that the worst was over…”

  We all thought wrong. Every one of us.

  They’re still out there, Lara.

  The blue eyes, the black eyes... And there are still more of them than we thought, even after Will’s sacrifice.

  So, so much more.

  “Where the hell did they all come from?” Brett was asking. “God, they just swallowed up the city. Before we knew it, they were all around us.”

  “You didn’t have any plans in place to deal with something like this?” Pressley asked.

  “Plans?”

  “Yeah. Contingencies. Just in case.”

  Keo smiled. “Just in case.” Now who else used to always say that—

  The loud bang! of a single gunshot shattered the rest of Keo’s thoughts.

  He turned around just in time to see Scarlett’s body slumping awkwardly forward, her forehead thumping against the floor as blood pumped through a gaping hole in the right side of her head.

  “Scarlett!” Brett shouted, a split second before there was a second bang! and the teenager’s own head snapped sideways, what was left of his brains splashing Keo in the face.

  Keo flinched as his vision was suddenly swimming in a sea of red. It took him two seconds—two measly seconds—to process what had just happened, but it was two seconds that he should have spent lifting and turning the shotgun. Instead, those wasted seconds cost him the opportunity to return fire.

  Even as he struggled to see through Brett’s blood
, the shooter was coming up the hallway toward them, the muzzle of a gun pointed right at him. The approaching figure moved in a hobbling motion, dragging one seemingly useless leg behind him while leaving a trail of blood on the floor. There was more blood on the wall where the man had to hold onto with a bloody palm to keep himself upright.

  But it wasn’t the blood or the pistol gripped tightly in the man’s right hand that Keo noticed with shocking clarity despite his partially blind vision. It was the eyes staring back at him.

  They…were…pissed.

  Greengrass.

  Seventeen

  Fuuuuuuuuuuck me.

  Greengrass looked every bit like death warmed over and then some. It wasn’t just the useless stump he was dragging behind him or the obvious pain written all over his face, or even the way his eyes kept squinting in an attempt to retain focus. Keo could easily believe that Greengrass had crawled out of the pits of hell just to make sure he didn’t make it out of Cordine City alive.

  How is he still alive? Better yet, how did he just murder Brett and Scarlett from the other side of the hallway?

  The Glock Greengrass had used on the kids was now pointed at Keo’s head. The pistol was as steady as the arm that held it, even if the rest of Greengrass seemed to quiver and was on the verge of collapsing with every step he took.

  Fall, damn you. Fall down and die already!

  But he didn’t. Greengrass had the look of a man who was just too angry to just sit down and call it a day. If Keo had any doubts the man could make the shot from his current distance, all he had to do was look over at poor Brett’s and Scarlett’s bodies. The teenage lovers were as dead as dead could be, each with a bullet hole in the head. Greengrass had taken them both out with one round apiece, and most of what had been inside Brett’s skull was now dripping from Keo’s face.

  God, this is disgusting. This is so disgusting.

  Amazingly, Brett hadn’t toppled forward to the floor in death. His body remained somehow sitting even though his head was slightly tilted forward, chin against his chest. It almost looked like he was meditating, but of course the blood dripping from the side of his head told another story. Keo thought about reaching over and lowering the teenager to lie next to his girlfriend, but he didn’t have the heart to touch the kid.

  Also, he was afraid Greengrass would shoot him if he did.

  Instead, Keo wiped at the kid’s remains as they dripped from his face. He had abandoned any ideas of using the shotgun in his lap because the muzzle was pointed in the wrong direction—at Pressley to his left, instead of Greengrass moving toward him on his right. He hadn’t done that on purpose. The shotgun ended up pointing in the wrong direction when he laid it down; but of course, it wasn’t the “wrong” direction until Greengrass showed up.

  All Keo could do now was wipe at Brett’s blood, concentrating on the parts around his eyes so he didn’t have to keep seeing everything through a permanent red filter, while Greengrass hobbled closer. Shooting Keo from this current distance would have been child’s play; not that the man had had any difficulty with Brett and Scarlett from three times that distance.

  “Well?” Greengrass said when he finally stopped near the door and leaned against the wall. His gun hand hadn’t lowered, and the weapon was still pointed at Keo’s chest.

  Christ, how is that gun hand not even moving? Is it made of cybernetic parts or something? Is the man even still human?

  “Well what?” Keo said. He flicked at blood and…other things from his fingers. They splattered the floor and opposite wall and clung to them. “We both know you’re not going to shoot me. They want me alive, remember? It wants me alive.”

  “Alive, but it’s not going to care what kind of shape you’re in.”

  “Just make sure you hit the right part of the body. Don’t wanna puncture an artery and have me bleed out.”

  “No, we wouldn’t want that. Still, I expected a little groveling.”

  Keo smirked. “You want me to beg? Is that it?”

  “I was hoping for something along those lines, yeah.”

  “Would it make any difference if I obliged?”

  Greengrass shrugged. “It never hurts to try.”

  “It might. I have a very fragile ego.”

  “Give it a try anyway.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “Didn’t know it was my job to supply you with fun, Greengrass.”

  “After all we’ve been through?”

  “Hey, a few hours in a prison cell does not a relationship make.”

  Greengrass took his eyes away from Keo and looked over at Pressley for the first time.

  Pressley had been standing there for a while now, not saying a word, and Keo had almost forgotten she was even next to him. He glanced over at her now. She was staring past him and at the two teenagers, but mostly on Scarlett. There was something in her eyes that looked almost like regret. Or was he reading too much into it?

  “Janet,” Greengrass said.

  “Janet?” Keo thought. Then, Ah. I guess Pressley isn’t her first name after all.

  Pressley looked up and over at Greengrass. “You’re alive, Jacob.”

  “Hey, kid,” Greengrass smiled. It was overly forced, even though Keo could tell that the man clearly had some affinity for Pressley. “You okay?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  Pressley glanced down at her bandaged leg, at the barely visible trails of blood clinging to her dark pant leg. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m running on painkillers. I’ll let you know when they start fading.”

  “Got any more?”

  She shook her head.

  “Too bad,” Greengrass said. He motioned at the door with the gun—just briefly, before bringing it back to line up with Keo’s chest. There was still shooting outside, but not nearly as much as before, and those they could hear were even more faint. “What’s going on out there?”

  “They’re here,” Pressley said.

  It took Greengrass a few seconds to understand. Then, “How many?”

  “From the sounds of it, all of them.”

  “That’s good. That’s good.” He grinned at Keo. “Not for you, of course.”

  “Figures,” Keo said. He’d almost gotten most of Brett off his face—or, at least, out of his eyes—and was feeling less like a grotesque version of the Phantom of the Opera. “You had to shoot him while he was sitting right next to me, didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t part of the plan,” Greengrass said. He glanced down at Brett’s body, then over at Scarlett’s where, like Pressley, he lingered a little longer. “I didn’t know she was a girl.”

  “What gave it away? The breasts?”

  “I mean, I didn’t know until she was dead.”

  As with Pressley, there might have been something that possibly resembled regret in Greengrass’s eyes, but Keo found it difficult to read the man with all the sweat and pain covering his face. Greengrass really did look like he would fall down at any second, but of course he never did. Supporting himself against the wall was a wise move given how blood-soaked his bandages were.

  Whatever emotions Greengrass was feeling about Scarlett’s death, he quickly pushed them away when he turned his attention back on Keo. “Take his weapons, Janet. We wouldn’t want to leave Keo with too many temptations. He’s right; we still want him alive.”

  “Ain’t I special,” Keo said.

  “You’re special, all right. If I’d known just how special, I would have brought more men.”

  “Or you could have just avoided me entirely.”

  “No can do. That wasn’t part of the assignment.”

  “Unfortunately for the rest of your unit.”

  Greengrass frowned. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

  Pressley walked the short distance over and collected Keo’s guns. They locked eyes for a brief second—much too brief
for Keo to really read anything in them—before she moved over to Brett and kicked his and Scarlett’s rifles away. The weapons skidded far enough up the corridor that Keo couldn’t have reached them if he had a five-second head start on both her and Greengrass.

  Now that Keo was unarmed, Greengrass lowered his gun and slid down to the floor. He let out a loud, relieved sigh, before closing his eyes for a few seconds, then quickly opening them back again.

  “You don’t look so hot, Greengrass,” Keo said.

  “I’m going to look a lot better than you within the hour,” Greengrass said.

  Pressley tossed Keo’s weapons up the hallway before sitting down next to Greengrass. “God, you look like shit, Jacob. And I thought I was in bad shape.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Greengrass said.

  “I’m not so sure about that…”

  “I’m good, kid. I’m good.”

  That second “I’m good,” Keo guessed, was mostly to convince himself.

  “Okay,” Pressley said, but she obviously didn’t believe him.

  Keo thought their little back and forth was ironic, as both of them looked like they could use a long stint in a hospital. Ironic, but impressive. Pressley was still dripping blood with every other step from her bandaged leg, and Greengrass, despite his very precarious physical state, seemed intent on giving death the middle finger.

  Just my luck I have these guys after me.

  Couldn’t you have sent someone less…badass, Buck, you piece of shit?

  “What happened?” Pressley was asking Greengrass.

  “One of them came into the cell they were holding me—holding us, before,” Greengrass said. “I think he thought it was some kind of refuge. I was hiding next to the door and got the jump on him. He fought—damn, did he fight—and I was in no shape to take on a baby, but what little element of surprise I had was just enough. Barely.”

  “Is he dead?”

  Greengrass nodded. “He had a rifle on him, but it was empty. Didn’t have any spares, so I left it behind and made do with this. Didn’t know where I was going there for a while, but then I heard voices and followed them here. You’re the first people I’ve met. I was beginning to think this place was abandoned.” He looked around the corridor, at Keo, then the two dead teenagers in front of him. “Is this everyone?”