Bump

by S.J. Finch

  ***

  Snow had begun to fall as the van pulled out of the garage and soon the streets and sidewalks and buildings began to disappear under a gentle white blanket. Ryan sat with Miles and Ruby in the back of the bouncing van.

  “Not exactly a magic wand.” Ryan said, nodding to the antique-looking rifle slung across Ruby’s lap.

  She smiled. “Oh, you’d be surprised. After all, magic can give you an edge, but there ain’t nothing in this world so handy in a scrap as a good rifle. This here has been in my family since my ancestors first staked their claim in Louisiana. Never misfired, never jammed, and, legend has it,” she said with a wink, “never, ever missed.”

  She gave the gun a gentle pat and then readjusted her gear. She still wore the brown duster and all her jewelry and necklaces, but tonight she had also donned a strange kind of bandolier, leather and slung across her chest. Instead of ammunition however, small brown bags of different shapes and sizes hung from the straps and swayed in unison whenever she moved.

  “I’m not one to complain here,” Miles said, changing the subject, “but do we have any kinda plan?”

  “We find the doc.” Ruby replied simply.

  “Well yeah, but what if he isn’t here?”

  “Then we ask these nice people where he is.” She said as she pulled down the lever on the rifle.

  “You coulda just said we got no plan. I’da been fine with that. Prefer it, actually.”

  Ryan sat back and wondered. He wondered if he was leading four good people into a trap. He wondered if he was leading them to a complete and utter dead end. He wondered if he was leading them to their deaths.

  He was worried about the decisions he had made, and the ones he was going to be asked to make, but Ryan found himself more worried about Evelyn. Since the discovery of the bloody van, she had been a very different person than the one Ryan had gotten to know. She was even more reckless and hot-headed, almost bloodthirsty. Webster meant a lot to Evelyn, Ryan knew that, he just hoped she didn’t go off and do something stupid tonight that got her or somebody else hurt.

  They felt the van stop and after a moment, the back doors swung open to reveal a snow-covered parking lot. It was the hospital Ryan had been discharged from only months before, but those months had felt like a lifetime, and the Ryan that had left this place was not the same Ryan who was now returning to it.

  The hospital was a group of four or five large buildings clustered together on a relatively small area of land. It was nearly two in the morning and the parking lot was empty, but some of the lights were still on. Hospitals, after all, never really closed. They were almost a hundred yards away from any of the structures, but even from here they could see that one of the buildings in particular was darker than the others.

  “Stay here.” Daniel ordered. “I will report back.”

  The raven took off from the crystalline white ground and disappeared into the murky blue of the night.

  Ryan looked around nervously then pulled Evelyn a few feet away, just out of earshot of Miles and Ruby, who were dutifully checking their many weapons. She had changed out of the incredible red dress and back into her incredible black tank top and combat pants.

  “Are you alright?” He whispered.

  “Fine.” She said flatly, examining the silver Jericho pistol.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t give a damn.” She said as she looked up into his eyes. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, not about this.”

  “You don’t have to. I get it.”

  “You don’t get it. This is just a job to you, and that’s fine. But it’s more to me. I owe that man everything and I didn’t deserve any of it. If he’s in there, I’m either coming out with him or not at all, because if I lose him, that’s it for me. You have friends, you have a family. I have one person in this bad joke of a world, and he is out there somewhere bleeding. So no, I guess I’m not fine. But standing here whining about my feelings isn’t going to get the job done.”

  “You can’t do the job right if you’re on the warpath like this.”

  She let the slide on the gun click back into place. “Watch me.”

  Daniel landed in the snow and retook human shape.

  “It appears as though Ryan was correct. Something here is amiss. The far building, the one without any lights, it is chained up and looks as though it has been completely closed down for months. There is no logic to a fully-functional, well-funded hospital like this one to close any of its doors. If we are to find anything, it will be there.”

  Snow fell silently in large, soft flakes that twirled and danced as they fell. In fact, everything around them was silent: there was no breeze to rustle the trees, no distant cars, no sirens, and no talking. The only sound was the crunching of their feet on the inch of snow that had already accumulated over the pavement.

  It wasn’t a long walk to the darkened building, but it felt that way. The anticipation of a coming battle combined with the fear of what unknown, terrible things might await them resulted in heavy hearts and heavier feet.

  The side entrance that Daniel led them to was indeed wrapped in a heavy chain. They were still a few feet away from the door when out of the shadows, Isaac appeared.

  Evelyn was first to react and in a millisecond her gun was an inch from the man’s forehead.

  “Easy, love.” He said, his palms up in a gesture of peace. “I’m not here to fight.”

  “I am.” She said.

  “That I can see. But I’m here to ask you to reconsider. Hess knows you’re here, he’s ready for you. He’s formed up a pretty hefty welcoming party, and none of them is quite so charming as me, if you follow my meaning.”

  “So this was a trap?” She asked.

  “Nah, he’s got no interest in killing you. This was a…cost of doing business. He figured after what happened with Webster, you’d be after him.”

  “Where’s the doctor?” Evelyn demanded, her tone icy as she pressed the gun barrel to his forehead.

  “I honestly don’t know. He could be in there, I wouldn’t know. All I know is that I’m here to deliver a message: leave this place alone and everybody goes home happy. Hess doesn’t want to kill you, covering up that sort of thing is expensive. But he can’t let you disrupt the operation either.”

  Evelyn lowered the gun. “Give us Webster and we walk.”

  Isaac shrugged. “I would if I had him, but like I said: I just do as I’m told. I’m just here to deliver the message.”

  Bang.

  The gun had jumped up in the blink of an eye and Evelyn had put a slug through Isaac’s shoulder from point-blank range. Despite this, the man barely flinched and there didn’t seem to be any blood coming out of the hole in his leather jacket.

  “I see.” He said calmly. “Well, I suppose that’s a ‘message received’ then. Have a lovely evening.”

  And without another word Isaac stepped back into the shadow and disappeared.

  Daniel delivered a powerful kick to the rusted padlock and it crumbled away. They slid the chain off the door and entered the vacant building.

  The air was stale and smelled of dust and old chemical cleaner. It was utterly and completely still inside the building, except for the soft footfalls of five people on dusty hospital linoleum.

  The power, it seemed, had either been cut or turned off and they were forced to mount their search in relative darkness. Large windows ran the length of the outer hallways and the snow outside reflected enough eerie blue light by which to see.

  “Miles, can you hear any minds?” Daniel asked.

  “No.” Miles replied. “I’m not picking up anything. So either this place is empty, or it’s full of things that aren’t human.”

  “Great.” Ryan muttered.

  They made their way slowly to the end of the hall without seeing or hearing anything. Ryan had been so keyed up, ready to transform at a moment’s notice, that he’d forgotten all about the wolf’s im
proved senses. He transformed immediately and detected a faint industrial pounding that came from further inside the building and below them. He returned to human shape and told the rest of the group.

  “Below us…” Ruby mused. “We’re on the ground floor.”

  “Must be a basement.” Evelyn said.

  “Also great.” Miles said sarcastically.

  They found a staircase and followed it down to the basement. Daniel leveled his shotgun as they approached the door, then he eased the door open.

  Windows set high on the walls, level with the ground floor, shed hazy blue light on the scene, which was far different than the one above.

  A dozen vampires had been waiting at the door and were on the group in seconds. Ryan was struck from behind and knocked to the ground before he could transform. A vampire was on him and snapping away. He punched and kicked at the thing but it held on. With all his human might Ryan flung it off him and scrambled to his feet. He felt the wolf wash over him and by the time the vampire had recovered and come back for a second round, it was facing a very different opponent. The vampire, undaunted, charged. With a massive swipe of his paw Ryan cracked the creature’s head against the cold brick of the wall.

  Daniel, Ruby, and Miles had dispatched the other vampires quickly with a few swift gunshots. Evelyn’s guns however, were still holstered.

  Instead, she had two hands around the vampire’s neck and was struggling with it on the floor a few feet from them. They rolled and grunted until Ryan heard Evelyn release a sharp, feral snarl and slam the creature to the ground and snap its brittle neck.

  Ryan heard scuffling footsteps coming at them from both ends of the hall, then the others heard it too.

  Daniel nodded. “Miles and Ruby will come with me down the left corridor. Can you two handle the right on your own?” He asked Ryan and Evelyn.

  They nodded.

  “Good.” He said. “Do not put yourselves in situations you cannot escape. We have no back up for you this time. Ryan,” he pulled from a holster on his hip a silver gun with wooden grips, “I loaded this with silver bullets. If Grayle finds us here, keep him occupied until I can get to you. Then we can finish him.”

  Ryan nodded his great gray head and Daniel put the gun back in its holster.

  The other three set off down the left and Ryan followed Evelyn down the right.

  The vampires were just around the corner and seemed surprised to meet the teenagers here. Ryan, still transformed, leapt into the fray head-first with the driving force of a freight train. Vampires scattered like bowling pins and he grabbed a neck in each hand and drove them both hard into the ground. He clawed and bit into dying flesh and the gunshots behind him told Ryan that Evelyn was holding her own.

  They made quick work of the remaining vampires and continued on their journey despite the gunshots and battle cries of their allies down the corridor behind them. Finding the doctor was the priority, and Ryan knew he had to trust that the others could handle themselves.

  Evelyn of course, had no problem keeping focus on the mission. She jogged down the corridor without a second thought and Ryan loped to keep up.

  They rounded the corner and the hallway grew darker as they moved farther away from the small windows. After a moment, the two came to a four-way intersection with another hallway. They stopped.

  “Any ideas?” Evelyn asked.

  Ryan shook his shaggy head.

  Without any warning or preamble, a hail of gunfire clattered around them out of the blackness in the right-hand hallway. Ryan leapt across the gap and the two took cover against the corners on either side. The muzzle flashes Ryan had seen out of the corner of his eye suggested four or five men, perhaps thirty yards down the hallway. Ryan shifted back to human.

  “Guns?!” He exclaimed. “An entire supernatural world of nasty things and he sends guys with guns after us?”

  “Well it seems to be working.” Evelyn replied.

  “Give me a weapon.” Ryan shouted over another volley.

  “You’re supposed to be a weapon.” She exclaimed.

  “Against bullets?”

  “They’re not gonna kill you. Just don’t get shot in the head.”

  “Not exactly my idea of a brilliant battle strategy.”

  Evelyn rolled her eyes and slid Ryan the submachine gun she had strapped to her back. He picked it up with nervous fingers.

  Evelyn fired a few blind rounds down the hallway and they heard at least one of the men go down. Ryan peeked around the corner and saw nothing but darkness. Out of the darkness appeared four distinct muzzle flashes and he barely had time to pull his head back before a dozen rounds buried themselves in the floor and wall next to him. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and the light from the nearby window meant the men could see them perfectly, while they could see nothing.

  Ryan snaked the submachine gun around the corner and rattled off a few ineffective rounds. The gun bucked in his hand and he didn’t have to look to know that none of his shots had made contact.

  A silence fell as neither side fired for a moment. Ryan knew they were pinned down, and although these four men were not the biggest threat they had faced that night, time was still ticking away. He knew the longer they were stuck here, the less of a chance they had of finding Dr. Webster.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan saw a streak of brown and gray round the corner they had just come from. In one fluid motion, Ruby yanked one of the bags off her bandolier, tossed it into the air of the darkened hallway, drew the lever-action rifle from her back, and fired a single shot straight through the bag.

  The hallway exploded in a flash of brilliant purple light and everyone but Ruby had to turn their heads and cover their eyes. She stood unmoving at their end of the hall, straight in the enemy’s line of fire. The woman took careful aim and planted one, two, three, four shots.

  The purple light died away, but not before Ryan caught a glimpse down the hallway of four slumped bodies.

  “Thanks.” He exclaimed.

  Ruby smiled her crinkled, worn smile. “Told you, never miss-”

  Blood exploded out of a patch on her thigh and Ruby crumpled to the ground with a cry of pain and surprise. Ryan reached out from cover and pulled her behind the corner. More bullets went slamming into the far wall, but there had been no gunshot.

  “What the hell is going on?” Ryan asked as he tried to apply pressure to Ruby’s bullet wound.

  Evelyn shook her head. “I don’t know. You deal with that, I’ll deal with this.” She peeked the pistol around the corner and fired a few more blind shots.

  “Third one down.” Ruby said weakly, nodding to her bandolier.

  Ryan yanked the bag off the belt and opened it. He shook the pale green powder out onto Ruby’s leg and the wound began to sizzle. It gave off a horrible, putrid stench, but the blood began to clot immediately.

  More un-fired rounds pounded into the walls, and then they heard the unmistakable sounds of weapons being disassembled: all five weapons at once.

  Realization dawned on Evelyn’s face. “Telekinetic.” She whispered to Ryan. That means these are useless.” She holstered her gun. “Your time to shine.”

  “What are you talking about? Won’t he just smack me against a wall? Or bring the wall down on me?”

  Evelyn shook her head. “Doesn’t work like that. Size and weight are huge factors. They can hurl bullets and tennis balls, but not cars. He shouldn’t be able to control you.”

  “Shouldn’t?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “What if he’s got bullets left?”

  “Then you deal with it.” She replied harshly. “We’re out of options.”

  “Fine.”

  Ryan helped Ruby deeper into the side hallway, away from the action.

  “You must be new here.” Evelyn called down the darkened hall.

  There was no response for a moment, and then a woman’s voice, a girl’s voice, rang out from the bla
ck. It was snide, almost mocking. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Because this is only the first time you’ve tried to kill me.” Evelyn replied.

  Ryan concentrated and felt his body transform. The darkness around him became clearer and better defined. He returned to the corner and crouched his huge body as well as he could in the cramped corridor.

  “First and last.” The voice replied.

  Ryan leapt out from behind the wall and tore down the hallway at top speed. He could see much better now, but the girl at the far end of the hall was still little more than an outline. She had seen him coming and, despite his incredible speed, the mind was still faster.

  A rifle stock hit him square in the chest with the force of a cannonball. The impact sent him spinning off balance and he crashed into the side wall. An empty magazine struck him in the face and Ryan felt as if he had just been punched by a truck. He was dazed, but not so out of it that he didn’t notice, or feel, the hail of metal gun parts that rained down on him from all sides.

  The girl was still twenty feet away and Ryan was being pelted nonstop with the makeshift artillery. He let out a deafening roar of frustration that reverberated off the linoleum floors and tiled walls.

  The pelting stopped as the girl lost concentration for a moment, frightened, and it was the only opening Ryan needed.

  He sprang to his feet and raced down the hall. Powerful leg muscles coiled then released as he launched himself at their attacker. He sailed through the air, closing in with incredible speed, and then he stopped.

  Ryan was inches from the girl, but he hung still in midair like a forgotten marionette. The girl had both hands up, shaking, and her face was contorted in immense concentration as she held Ryan aloft.

  She couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve, with long, sleek black hair that fell almost to her waist. She wore a white dress with a red sash to match her red hair band. Ryan didn’t know what she was doing in a place like this, dressed like that, levitating a werewolf like him, but he was sick of it.

  Ryan struggled and swiped in the air but she held him fast, as if an invisible wall separated them. Her hands began to shake and Ryan watched as perspiration started to dot her small forehead. He felt the wall coming down.

  He struggled and kicked and, little by little, inch by inch, made his way toward the girl as if he was walking against gale-force winds. He made it a foot closer, then another. They were inches apart now and Ryan reached up a paw to grab at her, but there was no need. He felt the wall come down and girl collapsed from the effort, out cold. He reverted to human form and called out to Evelyn.

  She arrived a few moments later beneath the arm of the injured Ruby. Ryan put a hand to the girl’s neck: her heartbeat was normal, but she was unconscious.

  “What took you so long?” Evelyn asked.

  “She held me. I mean in midair. I looked like Wile E. Coyote before he realizes he just ran off a cliff.”

  “I’ve never heard of a telekinetic being able to do that. She’s bad news.” Evelyn said.

  “So what do we do with her?” Ryan asked.

  Ruby fished another bag from somewhere within her coat. “Sprinkle a tiny bit of this under her nose. She’ll stay conked out ‘til all this is over. A tiny bit, mind you. We don’t wanna kill her.”

  “Speak for yourself.” Evelyn growled.

  Ryan applied the powder and they left the deadly preteen laying in the hallway.

  The going was slow now, with Ruby’s injured leg, but they didn’t dare leave her. Evelyn was still dead-set and steel-jawed on the mission, but she knew the only way to complete the mission was to live, and the only way to live was to stick together.

  Wandering the halls was an arduous process: Ruby’s injury slowed them down, but they also had to check each room for the doctor.

  “Why did you come back for us?” Ryan asked Ruby after they had stopped so she could rest.

  “Daniel and Miles, we hit a dead end back there. Nowhere else to go, so we were on our way back when another group of vamps jumped us. We cleaned ‘em up okay, but Miles got hurt in the process. That boy has the worst luck on these little excursions, I swear it. Anyway, Daniel was taking him back to the van. He’s gonna meet up with us…if he ever finds us.”

  “What do you mean, ‘dead end’?” Evelyn asked.

  “There was nothing down there, child. Lotta empty rooms, lotta dark hallways. If there’s anything in this building, it’s down this way.”

  Evelyn gave Ryan a pleading look. “The thumping you heard when we were upstairs, do you have a direction?”

  Ryan had been so preoccupied with the guns and the girl, he had forgotten to listen. He transformed.

  The pounding was louder now, but still rhythmic. It sounded as if it were being made by machines, or at least steel on steel. He couldn’t make out an exact point of origin however, only a vague direction. He reverted to his human form and reported.

  “Well a direction is better than what we had before.” Ruby mused.

  “Are you ready to go?” Ryan asked.

  She pushed herself up off the ground in answer and they set out again down the labyrinthine hallways, this time toward the noise, which took them deeper and deeper into the basement.

  They made their way in and out of corners, through hallways and long-forgotten offices and patient rooms. Nothing. Plastic sheeting covered most of the furniture and flapped ghostlike whenever they brushed past or opened a door. Except for the pounding, which was audible even to human ears now, everything was still.

  A bruised and bloodied Daniel caught up to them a few minutes later, and the four hobbled together through the hospital.

  Their winding, aimless path took them around a corner and back into moonlight. High-set windows lined the left-hand wall of this long, straight hallway which featured only two doors: a heavy steel one halfway down the right side, and a second, nondescript door facing them from the very end of the corridor.

  Ryan looked out the row of windows and saw a small, enclosed courtyard. It was surrounded by the high walls of the building on all four sides, but it looked to be at least thirty or so feet across. The ground, as well as the single, skeletal tree standing in one corner, were covered in deepening snow.

  As they started down this final corridor, the door in the side of the wall swung slowly open.

  Out the door walked a man, tall and thin, wearing a blue pinstripe suit and the only ascot Ryan had ever seen a grown man wear, outside Gilligan’s Island. It was silk and red and the perfect complement to the man’s well-groomed, pointed goatee. The hair on his face and on his head was jet black, with a few streaks of spreading silver. He looked to Ryan to be the sort of man who should be wearing a monocle, or perhaps tying damsels to train tracks.

  “Hello Ruby, my dear.” The man said with a low, affected, haughty drawl.

  “Hello Jeffrey.” Ruby replied, unimpressed. “Now don’t go takin’ this the wrong way, but if memory serves, I killed you.”

  The man chuckled. “Yes, and what an inconvenience it was. I do hope we can put that behind us though, I’d prefer to proceed with all possible civility.”

  “You sure you ain’t lookin’ to return the favor?”

  “Oh, if the mood strikes.” He mused with a smile. “But to be perfectly candid, fighting you to the death was the most fun I’ve had in years.”

  “Always happy to help.”

  “Indeed. Unfortunately Mr. Hess has offered me a tidy sum to paint these halls with the blood of you and your friends, and as lamentable a loss as it will be, I’m afraid my coffers aren’t quite as full as they used to be. Of course I’d prefer if you kept that last part our little secret. We don’t want the black magic community to lose their esteem in the incomparable Jeffrey Hatfield. What a tragedy that would be.”

  Evelyn scoffed in disgust and raised her pistol. Hatfield merely smiled.

  “This one’s not much for the small talk. Pity. That rascal Isaa
c of course showed me what you did to his jacket…tsk tsk. I’m sorry, but I won’t allow any piece of my wardrobe to suffer the same fate.”

  He plucked a small vial from inside his jacket pocket and spread its clear liquid contents in a circle around himself. He then produced a piece of charcoal and began to inscribe strange symbols on the ground, both inside and outside the circle.

  “Save your ammo, honey.” Ruby said and pushed Evelyn gently aside. Ruby pulled three bags from her bandolier and sat right down in the middle of the floor to carefully pour measured contents from one into the other and back and forth.

  Hatfield finished his spell and the circle and symbols grew red with a strange inner glow. The light intensified and became so bright that Ryan had to look away.

  When it had dimmed, then gone out entirely, Hatfield stood in the center of the circle and symbols, but he was no longer alone. On either side of him was a gigantic, jet black, bristling dog.

  They were proportioned strangely, unlike any dog Ryan had ever before seen: their forelegs and shoulders were thick and muscular, but their bodies sloped down into less-muscled hindquarters and shorter back legs. They bore a great mane of black fur around their necks, and short, squashed snouts were set beneath glowing red eyes that gleamed strangely lifeless.

  Hatfield smiled, and then without their master saying a word, the dogs attacked, running down the hallway toward them at full speed.

  They grew closer and closer and Ruby still fiddled with the bags and powders. No one was shooting and Ryan wasn’t sure why.

  Ruby finished her work, grasped a handful of the hybrid powder, and tossed it out before them in an arc. The powder spread in the air like dust, but as it settled to the ground, it grouped back together in a solid line, ten feet from them. The dogs, more aware than Ryan of what was going on, skittered to a halt before the line, which now glowed a faint purple. They snarled and bristled at their foes, but made no move to cross the line.

  Hatfield sighed, then smiled. “Never disappointing. Brava.” He stepped back to the large steel door and drew upon it a single large, intricate symbol. After a few seconds, he finished, placed his hand momentarily on the door, then pulled back.

  A strange series of crashes and clangs arose from inside the room beyond the steel door. It wasn’t like the rhythmic pounding, it was an intermittent and unexpected, like a group of drunks stumbling around a room full of fine china and stainless steel cutlery.

  Hatfield gave a final smile and disappeared, carried away into a thousand tiny pieces as if he were made of nothing but fine sand. Then they were alone with the dogs and the crashing.

  The crashes however, quickly changed. They died away and were replaced by a low, hollow banging just on the other side of the door, as if a group of people were knocking to be let in. Ryan craned his neck to get a better look at the door and what he saw made the blood chill in his veins.

  Above the door in worn black stencil was a room number, and a name: B22 – Morgue. The banging like fists on steel continued, and Ryan now knew that was exactly what it was.

  “What do we do?” He asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

  “The line won’t hold forever.” Ruby replied tensely, looking at the line of protective powder that had already begun to lose its glow. “And it sure won’t stop whatever is in that room.”

  The door sprang open under the weight of what was behind it, and they spilled out into the murky hallway.

  They were men and women and children, but only by very rough definition. Ryan had thought that the vampires looked like walking corpses, but they were nothing compared to this.

  The bodies were all in varying stages of decay, but not the lush, full, slightly blue decay of zombie movies. Their skin ranged from pale and pasty white to dark and cracked brown, to none at all. A few were nothing more than skeletons with bits of long-dried flesh still hanging like rags from their exposed bones and sparse strands of hair still clinging to their heads. Some had entire chunks missing from their torsos, with dried black intestines hanging out and swaying as they walked. Most were missing limbs. Some, missing heads. All, even the children, were missing their eyes.

  They walked as well as they could with incomplete bodies, and they shuffled ever closer to Ryan and the others. There was no moaning, likely because there were no vocal cords, and there were no outstretched arms…or even outstretched stumps of arms. Instead the bodies walked slowly, almost calmly forward. Ryan didn’t know what they were going to do when they reached the group, but he knew he wasn’t looking forward to it.

  To make matters worse, bodies continued to pour out of the morgue. Dozens of them. He didn’t know how big the adjoining room was, but he knew there was no way every single one of these things had been on a slab. It occurred to him then, in the part of his mind that wasn’t filling with dread, that the morgue of a vacant building shouldn’t have bodies in it to begin with.

  Evelyn fired two shots and neat round holes appeared in the foreheads of two of the corpses. They didn’t flinch, they didn’t even notice. They just kept coming closer.

  The black hounds didn’t seem to notice the bodies as they shuffled past. Ruby was right: they stepped over the dim purple line as if it didn’t exist. They drew closer.

  Ruby brought the rifle to her shoulder and fired shot after shot after shot. Each one hit its mark squarely in the head or heart. None of them did the job. Daniel let loose with the shotgun, and from this range, the front few corpses were blown into dusty pieces. Soon however, he was out of ammunition, and they were out of ideas.

  Ryan became the wolf and brought his shoulder forward to barrel into them. He managed to plow through a dozen, but they were unhurt and unfazed, and now he was surrounded.

  They didn’t attack him. They didn’t punch or kick or bite, they simply grabbed at him. They grabbed and they held on. In close quarters like these, he could only shake off a few of them and even then the arms simply detached from the sockets and held on still. He felt a thousand cold, dead, rotting fingers grasp at his fur, at his arms and legs, at his face, at his nose and mouth. He was pulled down into the masses and held fast by the sheer weight of the bodies on top of him. He squirmed and kicked and snapped but he could barely move. They piled on him more and more, weighing him down, making it almost impossible to breathe. He felt rotting skin and bone press up against him on all sides. He felt their stringy, limp hair and their rough, leathery internal organs. He smelled the foul, rotting stench. Ryan’s vision began to cloud. He was being smothered by a sea of dead flesh.

  He heard voices calling out, his friends screaming for him. He heard gunshots that did nothing. He heard kicks and punches that met their targets with sickening thuds, but had no hope of stopping or slowing the onslaught of death. Ryan’s mouth and nose and ears were plugged up by the press of bodies on all sides and the silence and blackness were almost welcome. He could feel himself losing consciousness, and with it came a strange serenity, a calming knowledge that when he did finally black out, he would never again wake up.

  Then Ryan blacked out.